THE 



WANDERING JEW 



MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY 

AUTHOR OF "DEMOXOLOGY AND DEVIL-LORE " 










NEW YORK 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 



COPVKIGHT, l88l, 
BY 

M OX CURE D. CONWAY. 






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PREFACE. 

It might be offered as a sufficient reason for writing this 
book that no other treatise on the same subject exists in 
our language. But to this it may be added, that in pam- 
phlets that have appeared in other languages, the relations of 
the Legend with Eastern mythology have been little con- 
: dered, and its connection with Hebrew and Christian 
chology almost ignored. Furthermore, those studies of the 
gend which I have read consider it mainly as a curiosity. 
t the subject, as it appears to me, possesses a larger signi- 
mce. Even the poems and romances it has suggested 
. to render the still sad music of humanity pervading the 
Rations of the folk-tale itself. 

The Legend of the " Wandering Jew" is an example of 
jw the folk-tale may sometimes be a mirror brought by 
Truth from the bottom of her well — the heart of the child- 
like world — wherein may be seen by reflection things that 
few eyes can look upon directly. The splendours now 
gathered around a triumphant Christ conceal from many 
the face of the changeling really there. But children, fools, 



y-\X /7^0 



vi PREFACE. 

and folk-lore speak the truth. The modern French sor 
says, " Jesus, who is goodness itself, sighing said, Thou sha 
march till Judgment Day." There is a touch of sceptic 
sophistication here. But among the many earlier song 
ballads, stories, there is not one which betrays the faintest 
suspicion of anything in the curse on the Wanderer not cha- 
racteristic of Jesus. No one tried to soften the case. Another 
widespread legend relates that once when Jesus begged bread 
of a baker, the dough prepared for him was reduced, before 
being placed in the oven, by the baker's daughter ; where- 
upon Jesus taught her the beauty of kindness by changing 
her into a deathless owl. Ophelia murmurs : " They say 
the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we 
are, but know not what we may be." These last words 
would not have been inappropriate for the owl to address to 
a Christ whose transformation her own reflected. I' 
this only a fantastic tale ? It is coinage of the ere 
that a human word or action may find its fair measure 
ages of penalty. In it is the fictitious equation of eve 
theology which unites ancient divinities not subject 
moral laws with human ideals. The sacerdotal sorce 
which for the lover of enemies substituted a curser 
enemies is discoverable in the earliest Christian theolog 
but the working out of it among the masses is not told . 
histories. The true record remains to be written, and the 
materials for it are indestructibly preserved in such legendary 
lore as this of the Wandering Jew. 



CONTENTS. 



I. THE LEGEND - 
II. THE UNDYING ONES - 

III. SOURCES OF THE MYTH 

IV. THE LEGENDS GENERALISED 
V. TRANSFIGURATION - 

VI. MANTLES OF THE IMMORTALS 
iZII. THE MARK OF CAIN - 
[I. THE JEW IN THEOLOGY 
X. THE JEW IN FOLK-LORE 
K. THE WEIRD OF THE WANDERER 
I. " THE VERY DEVIL INCARNATION " - 
II. THE WANDERING RACE 
II. THE POUND OF FLESH 

V. THE WANDERING JEW IN FOLK-LORE 
'XV. THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY 
gLVI. THE NEW AHASUERUS IN FRANCE - 
[VII. THE NEW AHASUERUS IN ENGLAND 

JTII. AHASUERUS VINCTUS 
JlIX. AHASUERUS DELIVERED 
XX. THREE WITNESSES 



- 3 

- 29 

- 38 

- 52 

- 56 

- 65 

- 7i 

- 80 

- 3; 

- 93 

- 104 

- 109 

- 118 

- 150 

- 166 

- 204 

- 225 

- 249 

- 269 

- 281 



THE WANDERING JEW. 



THE LEGEND. 

the year 1228, an Armenian bishop visited 
land ; and the purport of his conversation is 
rded in the Historia Major, begun by Roger de 
dover and completed (anno 1259) by Matthaeus 
ius. The interviews between the monks and the 
enian took place at St. Albans, through Henri 
^urnelj a French interpreter, a native of Antioch 
servant of the bishop ; and if the replies of the 
era prelate were rightly rendered, his tendency 
le marvellous was sufficiently strong. He was 
d, for instance, whether he had seen Noah's Ark, 
to be still preserved on an Armenian mountain, 

1 — 2 



THE WANDERING JEW. 



l/c 



and he replied " Yes." He was also asked whet 
he knew anything of " the famous Joseph," so mi icl 
discussed, said to have been preserved from the ti tk 
of the crucifixion of Christ, as a witness of tna 
event. The interpreter said that the personage li 
question had dined with his master shortly befor 
they left Armenia, and then gave the story a 
follows. The name of the wonderful Jew wa 
originally Cartaphilus, and he was Pilate's door 
keeper at the time of Christ's trial. When the ybunf 
men were leading Jesus out from the hall of judg 
ment, this doorkeeper struck him on the neck, ^nc 
said, <; Go, Jesus; go on faster: why dost thou linger? 
Jesus turned, and answered, "I will go, but thou sb V 
remain waiting until I come." (Here is quoted M \ 
xxvi. 24 : u The Son of man goeth as it is writter 
Him ; but woe unto that man by whom the S0 1 
man is betrayed ! it had been good for that ma I 
he had not been born.") Thenceforth Cartapr 
has been waiting. He was thirty years when , 
insulted Christ, and whenever he reaches the ag 
one hundred he faints ; on his recovery he fi 
himself as young as when his doom was pronoun 
(Which, again, reminds the Chronicler of a text, 
ciii. 5 : " Thy youth is renewed like the eagle 
and no doubt he was coming- near a mvth 



i 



THE LEGEND. 5 

which this item of the story is related, that of the 
PhcDenix.) It was further related that Cartaphilus 
had been baptized by Ananias (who baptized Paul) \j 
under the name of Joseph. He lives among eminent 
Christians in Armenia as a holy man ; relates to 
them and to ethers who visit him, sometimes from 
great distances, much concerning the Apostles : he 
never smiles, but sometimes weeps ; refuses gifts, is 
frugal, and talks little. He hopes for final forgive- 
ness, because he knew not what he did. The Chronicle 
adds that this story was attested by Richardus de 
Argentomio, who visited the East. 

The same archbishop is quoted for the story told 

the Chronique rimee of Philippe de Mousket, born 

>o, Bishop of Tournai in 1682. When the Jews 

-e leading Jesus to execution, " this man" (no name 

iven) said, " Wait for me : I also am going to see 

false prophet fastened to the cross." Jesus turned 

on him and said, " They will not wait for thee, but 

)U shalt wait for me." This man would seem to 

e been a Jew, whereas Cartaphilus was a Roman. 

^hese are the earliest written records of the legend 

:he Wandering Jew. From that time no trace of it 

>ears until the year 1547, when an individual 

ms to have appeared in Hamburg, pretending to 

the Wandering Jew himself. The legend and its 



6 THE WANDERING JEW. 

representative appeared in German annals sirr ml- 
taneously. The fullest account is in a work publisl ied 
1 613 : Newe Zcitung von cinevi Juden von Jerusal em, 
Ahasucrus genannt; welcher die Creutzigung tmst*rs 
I I crrn Jhcsu Christ i geschen, und noch am leben Usf, 
aus Dantzig an cincm gutcn Frennd geschrieben. T he 
name appended to this narrative is " Herr Chrystos- 
tomus Duduliius Westphalus," which Grasse belie yes 
a pseudonym. The author, however, embodies sta te- 
ments made in an earlier work : Strange Report oj? a 
Jew t born at Jerusalem, named Ahasnerus, who pre- 
tends he iv as present at tJie crucifixion of Christ. 
Newly printed at Ley den, Leipzig, 1602. From the 
same source came, True likeness of the zvhole forv 
a Jew, seen by all, from Jerusalem, zvho pretends, 
First printed at Augspurg, 1619. The narrative 
Westphalus is as follows : 

" Paulus von Eizen, Doctor and Bishop of Scl. 
wig, related to me, some years ago, that at the t', 
he was studying at Wittenberg, while on a visit 
his parents at Hamburg, in 1547, he had seer 
church, placed near the chancel, a very tall man, ^ 
hair falling on his shoulders, barefoot, who listenec 
the sermon with great attention ; and whenever 
name of Jesus was mentioned, bowed humbly, sn 
his breast, and sighed. His only clothing was a \ 



THE LEGEND. 7 

of trousers, ragged at the ends, and a coat tied with 
a cord which fell to his feet. He appeared to be fifty 
years of age. There seem to have been many of the 
nobility and gentry who have seen this man, in Eng- 
land, France, Italy, Hungary, Persia, Spain, Poland, 
Moscow, Lieffland, Sweden, Denmark, and Scotland, 
and in other regions. Everyone has marvelled much 
at him. And the aforenamed Doctor, having made 
inquiries as to where he could converse with this 
man, and having found him, asked him whence he 
came, and how long he had been there during that 
winter. On this the man very- humbly told him 
that he was by" birth a Jew of Jerusalem, named ' 
n hasuerus, his occupation that of a shoemaker ; that 
01 had been present at the crucifixion of Christ, since 
*nich time he had been alive ; that he had travelled 
i f _-ough many countries and cities ; and to prove that 
"f was telling the truth, he had knowledge of various 
^nts which had occurred since that time, as well as 
all the events which had happened to Christ when 
was brought before Pilate and Herod and finally 
cified. He told even more than we know through 
evangelists and historians ; and he narrated the 
ny changes of government, especially in Eastern 
Entries, which had occurred at one time or another 
,<iring those many centuries. Then he related most 



r:. 



8 THE WANDERING JEW. 

minutely the life, sufferings, and death of the h j y 
Apostles. And now, when Dr. Paulus of Eizen, w j^ 
great interest and astonishment, had heard th ese 
things, in order to obtain more thorough knowledge 
he asked him to relate exactly all that happene^ 
Thereupon this man answered that, at the time of t^ e 
crucifixion, he resided in Jerusalem, and like othc >rs 
he regarded Christ as a heretic ; he had not thoug^ 
of him otherwise than as a misleader of the people . 
and that with others he had endeavoured to get o ne 
who in his eyes was a rebel out of the world. Soc )n 
after the sentence had been pronounced by Pilai- e 
they led Jesus past his house. Knowing that L e 
would be led that way, he (Ahasuerus) had go 
home, and told all in his house that they might s 
Jesus pass by and would know what kind of man 
was. Just as Jesus was passing, he took a child 
his arms and stood before his own door. Chri 
bearing a very heavy cross on his shoulders, stopj 
a little before the shoemaker's door and lear 
against the wall. Then the shoemaker, full of sudc 
anger, and also desirous of public applause, tc 
Christ to move on whither he was ordered. Ur. 
this, Christ looked sternly upon him, and said, ' I \ 
stand here and rest, but thou shalt move until the 1; 
day !' Upon this, he put the child down quickly « 



THE LEGEND. 9 

the floor, and could stay there no longer. He fol- 
lowed Jesus, saw him miserably crucified, tortured, 
and slain. After all had been fulfilled, it was impos- 
sible for him to enter Jerusalem. He never saw his 
wife and child again, but as a sad pilgrim has wan- 
dered through foreign countries one after another. 
When after many years he returned once more to 
Jerusalem, he found everything sacked and destroyed, 
so that he could recognise nothing : not one stone 
was left upon another, nor any trace of the former 
magnificence visible. What God now intended to do 
with him, in leaving him in this miserable life wander- 
ing about in such wretchedness, he could not explain 
otherwise than that God wished him to remain until 
the Day of Judgment as a living sign against the 
Jews, by which the unbelieving and the godless 
might be reminded of Christ's death and be turned 
to repentance. For his part he would be very happy if 
God would take him to heaven out of this vale of tears. 
" After this report and conversation, Dr. Paulus of 
Eizen asked, as also did the School-Inspector of 
Hamburg, who was learned in ancient histories, the 
right account of all sorts of things which had occurred 
in Eastern countries after Christ's birth and crucifixion. 
This man gave a very good and exact report of all 
these ancient events : so that people were obliged 



io THE WANDERING JEW. 

to believe in him and his story, and went away 
astonished, and saying, that with God all things are 
possible — but with man they are inscrutable. 

" As to this Jew's life it was very quiet and retired* 
He did not talk much, and only when asked a ques- 
tion ; and when invited into a house, he did not eat or 
drink much, being abstemious. He never stayed 
long in one place. At Hamburg, Dantzig, and else- 
where, when money was offered, he only accepted 
two shillings, which soon after he gave to the poor, 
with the remark that he did not need any money ; 
that the good God would provide for him because he 
was penitent for his sin ; and what he had ignorantly 
done he would submit to God. None ever saw him 
laugh. In whatever country he entered he knew the 
language at once. At that time he spoke the Saxon 
language as one born there. Many people came to 
Hamburg, from neighbouring and even distant places, 
to sec and listen to this man, and believed that some- 
thing marvellous was indicated by him, because he 
was not only attentive to the Word of God but showed 
great reverence, and sighed whenever the name of 
God or Christ was pronounced. He could never 
hear anyone utter a curse. Whenever the name or 
torture or sufferings of God were connected by any 
excited person with a curse, he would sigh deeply, 



THE LEGEND. n 

and say, ' Miserable man, miserable creature ! wilt 
thou take lightly the name of thy Lord and God, and 
of his great suffering and torture ? Hadst thou seen 
it as I did, hadst thou seen how hard the wound of 
thy Saviour was for thee and me, thou wouldst rather 
do a great harm to thyself than pronounce his name 
lightly/ All these things Dr. Paulus of Eizen told 
me with truth and sincerity, with many other true 
circumstances, which, since then, I have heard from 
several old friends who also saw the same man at 
Hamburg with their own eyes. Which things, also, 
Paul of Eizen saw, and has told with truth and 
earnestness. 

"Anno 1575. The Secretary Christoph Krause 
and Magistrate Jacobus von Holstein had been sent 
as ambassadors to the Royal Court of Spain, and 
afterwards to the Netherlands, in order to pay the 
soldiers who served in the royal [army] ; and when 
they had returned home again, being near Schleswig, 
they solemnly related that they had seen this wonder- 
ful man in Spain, with the identical appearance, 
costume, manners, and mode of life. They had 
spoken to him personally ; and said that at the same 
time many besides themselves heard him speak good 
Spanish. 

"Anno 1599. In Christ's month, a very trust- 



12 THE WAADERING JEW. 

worthy person wrote from Brunswick to Strasburg 
that this wonderful man was then in Vienna, in 
Austria, and that he intended to go from thence into 
Poland and Dantzig, and after that to Moscow. This 
Ahasuerus has been at Lubeck in 1601. And also at 
Rcffel in Lieffland, and in Cracow, Poland. He was 
seen and spoken to by many people in Moscow. 

" What now sensible men shall think of all this I 
leave to themselves. The providences of God are 
marvellous, inscrutable, inexplicable ; as time goes 
on they will become more so ; and they will only 
be revealed to us at the last day. 

" Dated at Rcffel, the first of August, 1613.— CHRY- 
SOSTOMUS DUDULAUS WeSTPHALUS." 

Other notices of the Wandering Jew are as follows. 
Nicolas Heldvaler {Sylva Chronol. Circuit Baltici) says: 

"This year (1604) there has appeared a fable of 
a Jew who is said to have been a shoemaker in 
Jerusalem in the time of Christ, and having on Good 
Friday struck Jesus with his shoe-last, cannot die, 
but must wander about the world till the last day." 

Rodolphe Bouthrays (Botereius), Parliamentary 
Advocate of Paris (in his Commentarii de Rebus His- 
toricis in Gallia et toto pene Orbe gestis, Lib. xi., 1604), 
mentions the report as wide-spread in his time. The 
following is a translation from his Latin : 



I 



THE LEGEND. 13 



* 



" I am afraid that some may charge me with anile 
trifling, if I insert in this page the story which is told 
in the whole of Europe, concerning a Jew, a contem- 
porary of the Saviour Christ. Nothing, however, is 
more widely-spread, and the vernacular history of our 
own countrymen has not blushed to declare it. Thus 
I have, as witnesses, those who formerly wrote our 
Annals . . . that he, not in one century [only] ha^ 
been seen and recognised in Spain, Italy and Ger- 
many, but that this year it was he himself who was 
seen at Hamburg, anno 1564. Many other things 
the vulgar imagine about him, as it is prone to ru- 
mours ; which I relate, lest anything should remain 
untold." 

The following is a translation from the Latin of 
Julius Csesar Bulenger {Historiarium sui Tempoi'is 
Libri) Leyden, 1619) : 

" It was reported at that time that a Jew, a con- 
temporary of Christ, who for more than a thousand 
years had been a vagrant and a wanderer over the 
whole world, was still wandering about without meat , 
and drink, having been condemned to that punish- 
ment by God, because he was the first of the dregs of 
the circumcised to cry out that Christ should be fixed 
to the Cross, and that Barabbas the robber should be 
released from the hook and the terror of the Cross. 



i 

14 THE WANDERING JEW. 

Afterwards, when Christ, panting from the weight of 
the Cross, would have rested at his workshop, for he 
was a mechanic, he ordered Him off with bitter w r ords. 
To whom Christ said, Because thou begrudgest me so 
little rest, I will rest ; and thou without rest shalt 
wander. And it is told that presently, in less time 
than the telling occupies, the man wandered frantic 
and aimless throughout the whole city, that thence 
his wanderings continue over the whole world even to 
this present day, and that it was the very man who 
was seen at Hamburg in the year 1564. ' Credat 
Judreus Apella.' I did not see the man at that time, 
since I was occupied at Paris, nor did I hear about 
him from sufficiently trustworthy authorities." 

Louvet mentions seeing him in 1604 a t Beauvais, 
surrounded by a crowd of children, speaking of the 
Passion of Christ. He expresses regret that his con- 
tempt for the fellow prevented his interrogating. He 
asked and received alms at a certain house. 

S. H. Bangert {Commentatio de ortu vita et excessu 
Colcri Jurisconsulti Eubccensis, Lubeck, 1644) men- 
tions that Coler left a memorandum in his diary to 
the effect that " that immortal Jew, who asserted that 
he had been present at the crucifixion of Christ, was 
at Lubeck on the 14th January, 1603." 

Martin Zeiler (Historici Chronologi et Geographi 



THE LEGEND. 15 

Celebres Collect^ Ulm, 1653) mentions the Wandering- 
jew. Among his Letters Zeiler cites one by West- 
phalus, substantially the same as his account (161 3) 
already quoted, as having been written to one of his 
(Westphalus') friends. 

In the year 1644 the 'Turkish Spy' writes from 
Paris (Book III. Letter I.) to Ibraham Haly Cheik, a 
Man of the Law, as follows : 

" There is a man come to this city, if he may be 
called a man, who pretends to have lived above these 
sixteen hundred years. They call him the Wander- 
ing Jew. But some say he is an impostor. He says 
of himself that he was Usher of the Divan in 
Jerusalem (the Jews call it the Court of Judgment), 
where all criminal causes were tried, at the time 
when Jesus, the Son of Mary, the Christian's Messias, 
was condemned by Pontius Pilate, the Roman Presi- 
dent. That his name was Michob Ader ; and that 
for thrusting Jesus out of the Hall with these words, 
' Go, why tarries t thou ?' the Messias answered him 
again, ' I go, but tarry thou till I come ;' thereby 
condemning him to live till the Day of Judgment. 
He pretends to remember the Apostles that lived in 
those days, and that he himself was baptized by one 
of them ; that he has travelled through all the regions 
of the world, and so must continue to be a vagabond 



1 6 THE WANDERING JEW. 

till the Messias shall return again. They say that he 
heals all diseases by touching the part affected. 
Divers other miracles are ascribed to him by the 
ignorant and superstitious ; but the learned, the noble, 
the great, censure him as a pretender or a madman. 
Yet there arc who affirm that 'tis one convincing 
argument of the reality of his pretence that he has 
hitherto escaped a prison, especially in those countries 
where the authors of all innovations are severely 
punished. He has escaped the Inquisitions at Rome, 
in Spain, and in Portugal, which the vulgar will have 
to be an evident miracle. 

" One day I had the curiosity to discourse with him 
in several languages ; and I found him master of all 
those that I could speak. I conversed with him five 
or six hours together in Arabic. He told me there was 
scarce a true history to be found. I asked him what he 
thought of Mahomet, the Prophet and Lawgiver of 
the Mussulmans ? He answered that he knew his 
father very well, and had often been in his company 
at Ormus in Persia ; that Mahomet was a man full 
of light and a divine "spirit, but had his errors as well 
as other mortals, and that his chiefest was in denying 
the crucifixion of the Messias ; ' for,' said he, ' I was 
present, and saw Him hang on the Cross, with these 
eyes of mine.' He accused the Mussulmans of 



THE LEGEND. 17 

1 imposture' in making the world believe that the tomb 
of their Prophet hangs miraculously between heaven 
and earth, saying that he himself had seen it, and 
that it was built after the manner of other sepulchres. 
Thou who hast been at the Holy Place knowest 
whether this be true or false. He upbraids the 
Persian Mahometans with luxury, the Ottomans with 

' tyranny, the Arabians with robbery, the Moors with 
cruelty, and the Mussulmans of the Indies with 
atheism. Nor does he spare to reproach the Christian 
churches : he taxes the Roman and Grecian with the 
pompous idolatry of the heathens ; he accuses the 

^ ^Ethiopian of Judaism, the Armenian of heresy ; and 
says that the Protestants, if they would live according 
to their profession, would be the best Christians. 

" He told me he was in Rome when Nero set fire to 
the city and stood triumphing on the top of a hill to 
behold the flames. That he saw Saladin's return 
from his conquests in the East, when he caused his 
shirt to be carried on the top of a spear, with this 
proclamation : ' Saladin, lord of many rich countries. 
Conqueror of the East, ever victorious and happy, 

! when he dies shall have no other memorial left of all 

I his glories, but only this poor shirt' 

" Pie relates many remarkable passages of Soliman 
the Magnificent, whereof our histories are silent, and 

2 



1 3 THE WANDERING JEW. 

says he was in Constantinople when Soliman built 
that royal mosque which goes by his name. He 
knew Tamerlane the Scythian, and told me he was so 
called because he halted on one leg. He pretends 
also to have been acquainted with Scander-Beg, the 
valiant and fortunate Prince of Epirus. He seemed 
to pity the insupportable calamity of Bajazet, whom 
he had seen carried about in a cage by Tamerlane's 
order. He accuses the Scythian of too barbarous an 
insult on the unfortunate Sultan. He remembers 
the ancient Caliphs of Babylon and Egypt, the 
empire of the Saracens, and the wars in the Holy 
Land. He highly extols the valour and conduct of rj 
the renowned Godfrey de Bouillon. He gives an 
accurate account of the rise, progress, establishment 
and subversion of the Mamelukes in Egypt. He v 
says he has washed himself in the two head-springs 
of the river Nile, which arise in the southern part of 
^Ethiopia. That its increase is occasioned by the 
great rains in ^Ethiopia, which swell all the rivers 
that fall into the Nile, and cause that vast inundation 
to discover whose origin has so much puzzled 
philosophy. He says that the river Ganges in India 
is broader and deeper than the Nile ; that the river 
Niger in Africa is longer by some hundreds of miles ; 
and that he can remember a time when the river 



1 



THE LEGEND. 19 

Nile overflowed not till three months after the usual 
season. 

" Having professed himself an universal traveller, 
and that there was no corner of the earth where he 
had not been present, I began to comfort myself with 
the hopes of some news from the Ten Tribes of Israel 
that were carried into captivity by Salmanasar, King 
of Assyria, and could never be heard of since. I 
asked him several questions concerning them, but 
found no satisfactory answer. Only, he told me "that 
in Asia, Africa, and Europe he had taken notice of a 
sort of people who (though not Jews in profession) 
yet retained some characteristics whereby one might 
discover them to be descended of that nation. In 
Livonia, Russia, and Finland he had met with people 
of languages distinct from that of the country, having 
a great mixture of Hebrew words ; that these 
abstained from swine's flesh, blood, and things 
strangled ; that in their lamentations for the dead 
they always used these words : Jeru, Jem, Masco, 
Salem. By which, he thought, they called to remem- 
brance Jerusalem and Damascus, those two famous 
cities of Palestine and Syria. In the Circassians also 
he had traced some footsteps of Judaism : £heir 
customs, manner of life, feasts, marriages, and Sacri- 
fices being not far removed from the institutions of 



20 THE WANDERING JEW. 

Mosaic Law. But, what is most remarkable, he said 
that he had conversed with professed Jews in the 
north part of Asia who never so much as heard of 
Jesus, the son of Mary, or of the revolutions of Judea 
after his death, the siege and destruction of Jerusalem, 
or an)- other matters wherewith all histories abound 
concerning that nation. He said, moreover, that these 
Jews had only the Pentateuch, not having heard of 
the rest of those Books which compose the greatest 
part of the Old Testament ; and that this Pentateuch 
was written in a sort of Hebrew far different from that 
which is now commonly spoken by the rest of the 
Jews dispersed throughout the world. That the 
number of these Jews was infinite. And, finally, he 
thought that these (if any) were the true posterity of 
those Ten Captive Tribes. 

" Having mentioned the destruction of Jerusalem, 
I asked him where he was at that time ? He told 
me, in the Court of Vespasian at Rome ; and that he 
had heard the emperor say, when he understood the 
Temple of Solomon was burnt to ashes, 'he had 
rather all Rome had been set on fire.' Here the old 
man fell a-weeping himself, lamenting the ruin of 
that noble structure, which he described to me as 
familiarly as if he had seen it but yesterday. He says 
that Josephus wrote partially of the seditions in the 



THE LEGEND. 21 

city, being related to one of the chief ringleaders, 
whom therefore he spared, being loth to stain the 
reputation of his own family to all posterity. 

" I tell thee, sage Cheik, if this man's pretences be 
true, he is so full of choice memoirs, and has been 
witness to so many grand transactions for the space 
of sixteen centuries of years, that he may not unfitly 
be called ' A living Chronology,' the ' Protonotary of 
the Christians' Hegira,' or principal recorder of that 
which they esteem the last epocha of the world's 
duration. By his looks one would take him for a 
relic of the Old World, or one of the long-lived fathers 
before the Flood. To speak modestly, he may pass 
for the younger brother of Time. 

" It would be endless to tell thee how many other 
discourses we had of his travels and memoirs ; till, 
tired with his company, and judging all to be a cheat, 
I took my leave. I assure thee, he seems to be a man 
well versed in all histories, a great traveller, and one 
that affects to be counted an extraordinary 
person. The common people are ready to adore 
him ; and the very fear of the multitude restrains the 
magistrates from offering any violence to this im- 
postor. 

" Live thou in the exercise of thy reason, which 
will not permit thee to be seduced into errors by the 



22 THE IVANDERLXG JEW. 

subtle insinuations of men. Continue to love Mahomet, 
who honours thee without a fiction. 

" Paris, 4th of the ist Moon of the Year 1644." 

In, or about, the year 1645 there was published in 
German at Augsburg the Strange Report of a Jew who 
claims to have been present at the crucifixion, and to have 
been kept alive from that time. A theological warning 
to the Christian reader, illustrated and enlarged by trust- 
worthy histories and examples. On this book there is 
a picture representing a village, with trees ; on the 
right the sun emerging from clouds ; in the centre 
Jesus crowned with thorns, his arms stretched out ; in 
front, the Wandering Jew kneeling with clasped 
hands, his hat and the Bible lying before him. On 
both sides, in horizontal line, runs the sentence : 
From Chrysostomo Dudulceo Westphalo, written to Jus 
good friend. On the back are some verses, the first 
two lines being in Latin : 

a Nubibus in altis crucifixum cernit Jesum 
Asverus, dignum clamitat ante cruce." 

In 1 68 1 there appeared a publication, written by 
Pastor J. Georg Hadeck : Nathaniel i Christiano. 
Relation concerning a hermit named Ahasuerus, a Jew 
who was present at the crucifixion, etc. 

M. Magnin in an essay prefixed to the Ahasuerus 



I 



THE LEGEND. 23 

of Edgar Quinet (Paris edition of 1843, P- 2 4) sa y s 
" In 1 64 1 an Austrian baron, and in 1643 a physician 
returned from Palestine, related that a certain Turk 
had pointed out ' Joseph ' to a Venetian nobleman 
named Bianchi. The poor Jew was then under close 
guard at the bottom of a crypt in Jerusalem ; he was 
dressed in his ancient Roman costume, exactly that 
of the time of Christ. He did nothing but walk about 
the room without saying a word, and strike his hand 
against the wall, or sometimes his breast, to testify 
his sorrow for having struck the holy face of the Lord. 
I find these details in an anonymous German work of 
the middle of the 17th century, bearing the singular 
title of Relation^ or Brief account of two living wit- 
nesses of the Passion of our Saviour!' This was no 
doubt a version of the work of Droscher, De duobus 
testibus vivis passionis dominiccB, Jena, 1688. M. 
Gaston Paris believes this to have been a tale sug- 
gested by the Matthew Paris Chronicle, printed in 
London in 1571, at Zurich in 1586. 

An important work appeared with the following title: 
Dissert atio historica de Judceo 11011 mortali, etc. Certa- 
miiiis publ. argum. f. Prces. Schultz. Regiom. Pruss. 
respondens Martin Schmid Slavio. Pomer. A.D. 26 Jan. 
Ann. 1689. This work contains a curious account of 
the Twelve Tribes, sent by a Jewish physician to his 



24 THE WANDERING JEW. 

co-religionists in Mantua; also a " trustworthy " copy 
of the judgment which Pilate pronounced on Christ, 
stating his motives, subscribed by all members of his 
council and officers of the Sanhedrim ; with the full 
Notes of the Prosecutor ; these having been " found in 
a marble rock in the city of Aquila;" (This idea was 
used by A. W. Schlegel, in his romance on the subject.) 

In 1697 a book was published at Wolffenbiittel, 
entitled Description of a Hermit, a Jezu (etc.), who 
brings near the evidence of Joseph concerning Christ ; 
the history of the death of Christ ; the Letter of 
Lentulus to the Roman Council ; the condemnation of 
Christ; history of the broken stone; Letter of Pilate 
to the Emperor Tibcmas ; of Pilate's punishment said 
to have been inflicted on the Twelve Tribes of Lsraelfor 
the crucifixion of Christ. With an addition concerning 
a Jew, a sorcerer, ivJio gave himself cut for the Mcssias. 
Collected out cf respectable old histories and most trust- 
ivorthy testimonies. 

In the French language there was published at 
Bordeaux (1609) the True History of the Wandering 
Jew taken from his ozun lips. The legend seems hardly 
to have been known in Spain, and but little in Italy, 
at any early date. There was printed at Bruges 
(where the Chronique rimce of Philippe de Mousket 
had prepared the soil for it) early in the seventeenth 



! 



THE LEGEND. 25 



century (probably) -a folkbook entitled Wonderful 
History of the Wandering Jew, who since the year 33 
to this tune has ofily wandered. 

In the English language the only early story of the 
Wandering Jew, after that in the Chronicle of 
Matthew of Paris, is the ballad contained in Percy s 
Reliques. This ballad is in black-letter in the Pepys' 
collection ; it follows the Hamburg legend, and was 
probably written early in the 17th century. That the 
legend was well known in England in the seventeenth 
century appears from a satire, in which it is utilised, 
without being narrated, entitled The Wandering Jew 
telling Fortunes to Englishmen. A Jew's Lottery. 

^London : printed by John Raworth. for Nathaniel 
Butter, 1640. 

It should also be stated that there were a number 
of treatises written against the story, such as — 1. De 
duobns testibus vivis passionis Christi. Jena, 1668 
(written by S. Niemann) ; 2. Meletea historiade Judceo 
inimortali, 1668 (written by J. Freutzel) ; 3. Diss, 
hist, de Judceo 11011 mortali, 1689 (written by Martin 
Schmid). In the following century (1723) an anony- 
mous pamphlet was printed, in Frankfort and Leipzig, 
• concerning the Immortal Jew, in which it is shown 
throughout that in the nature of things he never 

I existed." In 1756 was published C. Anton's Diss. 



5 



26 THE WANDERING JEW. 

in qua lepidam fabulam de Judceo hmnortali examinet ; 
followed by An Alewifes letter to Anton, that there 
is a Wandering Jew. (Halle, 1756.) 

This earlier bibliography of the Wandering Jew is 
mainly condensed from the most important work on 
the antiquarian features of the legend : — Die Sagevom 
Ewigen Juden, historisch entwecklt mit verwandter 
Mytlicn verglichen und beleuchtet. Von Dr. J. G. Th. 
Grasse. Dresden u. Leipzig, 1844. 

In following Grasse, M. Schcebel (La legende du 
Juif Errant, Paris, 1877), and M. Gaston Paris (Le 
Juif Errant, Paris, 1880) have added important points 
and criticisms. 

From the various books mentioned are gathered 
the following notes : 

S. Grosse (in his " History of Leipzig ") says that the 
Wandering Jew appeared there as a beggar in 1642, 
and accepted gifts, some of high value. Other 
traditions report that he refused presents. 

It is a tradition of Matterberge, under the 
Matterhorn, that formerly a great city stood there ; 
and it is said that when the Wandering Jew first came 
there he said : " When I come again I shall find a forest 
where now are houses ; and when I come the third time 
all will be snow and ice : and this has been fulfilled." 

It is said that at Naumburg (Thuringia) he could 



I 



THE LEGEND. 27 

neither sit nor stand still. Even when listening to a 
sermon he was always moving. He said he had " no 
rest by day or night, and was kept alive without food 
or drink, sleep or rest, for many years in a miraculous 
manner." It is said that, in 1640,, two citizens of 
Brussels, walking in a wood, met a grey old man, in 
shabby and antique garb. They invited him to an inn, 
where he drank with them, standing. Before leaving, 
he told them of things that happened centuries 
before. They gathered that he was Isaac Laquedem, 
the Jew who forbade his Lord to rest at his door, 
and left him in terror.' 
^ The presence in England of a man pretending to 
be the Wandering Jew is stated in a letter of Madame 
de Mazarin to Madame de Bouillon (Calmet, Diet, de 
la Bible, ii. 472). In England he assumed the character 
of one who had been an official of high rank in Jerusa- 
lem. His statements to the English noblemen and 
University professors who conversed with him (many of 
whom believed his story) were so precisely those which 
were given to the Turkish Spy in Paris that there is 
no need to reproduce them here. It is probable that 
the same man had journeyed from Paris to England, 
as it is difficult to believe that two such clever and 
learned impostors could appear at the same time. 
It is notable that an account of the first appearance 



28 THE WANDERING JEW. 

of a personal representative of the legend should 
only have been published more than fifty years (cer- 
tainly) after his visit to Hamburg ; and then just after 
the death of the witness said to have conversed with 
him, Paul of Eizen. This prelate was born at Ham- 
burg, 1522, and died in 159S. His alleged testimonies 
to the Wandering Jew were reported subsequently by 
the pseudonymous Dudulaus. It is further remark- 
able that in the story as told by Dudulaus, already 
given, nothing is said of a blow dealt Jesus by 
Ahasuerus. He evidently desires to soften the story 
for the Wandering Jew, and adduce him as a witness 
to the Christian legend. He tries in one of his pam- 
phlets to recommend the story to sceptics by relating 
another of three pious miners of Bohemia, who fell 
into a pit at Kuttenberg. They remained there for 
seven years, their provisions and lamp holding out 
miraculously. One prayed that he might again see 
the light of day ; another, that he might once more 
eat with his family ; the third, that he might live one 
more year with his wife and children. The prayers 
were answered, but each died suddenly immediately 
after his wish was fulfilled. 

Theammusof the revival of the legend isshown by in- 
stances in which the Jews' quarters were invaded under 
rumours that they were concealing the Wanderer. 






II. 

THE UNDYING ONES. 

The myth of the Wandering Jew belongs, essentially, 
to a class which has great antiquity, and is found in 
every part of the world. 
^ At a period before Animism had been embodied 
in clear conceptions of a life beyond the grave, the 
human heart and mind had to adapt themselves as 
well as they could to the King of Terrors, which 
destroyed the greatest as well as the humblest. The 
first that were ideally wrested from Death were 
saints and heroes ; and it was necessary to find for 
these an earthly immortality. Many myths and 
legends of the undying ones are no doubt variants of 
each other ; but they are found among races so sepa- 
rate in origin and history, that we may be content ..to 
find their common root in human nature. Men 
cannot bear to think that their leaders, heroes, 
saviours are really dead. They resolutely repel the 



30 THE WANDERING JEW. 



\ 



unwelcome fact as long as they can. They easily 
credit any rumour that the reported death is some 
fiction of the enemy, or possibly a stratagem of their 
own party-leaders. It is said that after the death of 
General Jackson, a President of the United States, 
many democrats still voted for him at the following 
election, denouncing the report of his death as 
" another Whig lie." The story if not true is ben 
trovato ; and there are facts enough like it even in 
modern history. Sceptics were found in France who 
but slowly credited the tidings of the death of Napo- 
leon III. : their transient suspicions were echoes of 
Beranger's cry when he heard of the first Napoleon's 
death : " God, I can scarce believe Thee without 
him ! M * 

It is recorded in the Heimskringla that, after the 
death of King Odin, " the Swedes believed that he 
often showed himself to them before any great battle. 
To some he gave victory, others he invited to him- 
self ; and they reckoned both of these to be well off 
in their fate." Thus, the Wild Huntsman began his 
career. This tendency in the popular mind was 
utilised by courtiers of the next popular monarch. 

* Some excellent remarks on this subject, and historical 
illustrations, are contained in an article in the late Theological 
Review (July, 1 871) on the " Nero Saga," by W. M. W. Call. 



I 



THE UNDYING ONES. 31 



This was Freyr, second monarch after Odin, who 
probably lived in the first century of our era, and 
built the great temple at Upsal. It is recorded : 
" Then began, in his days, the Frode-peace ; and then 
there were good seasons in all the land, which the 
Swedes ascribed to Freyr, so that he was more 
worshipped than the other gods, as the people became 
much richer in his days by reason of the peace and 

good seasons Freyr fell into a sickness ; and 

as his illness took the upper hand, his men took the 
plan of letting few approach him. In the meantime 
they raised a great mound, in which they placed a 
door with three holes in it. Now when Freyr died 
they bore him secretly into the mound, but told the 
Swedes he was alive • and they kept watch over him 
for three years. They brought all the taxes into the 
mound ; and through the one hole they put in the 
gold, through the other the silver, and through the 
third the copper money that was paid. Peace and 

good seasons prevailed When it became known 

to the Swedes that Freyr was dead, and yet peace 
and good seasons continued, they believed that it 
must be so as long as Freyr remained in Sweden ; 
and therefore they would not burn his remains, but 
called him the god of this world, and afterwards 
offered continually blood sacrifices to him, principally 



ii 



/ 



32 THE WANDERING JEW. 



for peace and good seasons."* Here we have one 
chapter in the genesis of these immortals. Men have 
been executed in Portugal for professing to be 
Sebastian returned. In the time of James II., 
country-people in England believed that Monmouth 
•had not really died on the scaffold, but "would sud- 
denly appear, would lead them on to victory, and would 
tread down the King and the Jesuits under his feet."*f" 
Some believed him to be the Man in the Iron Mask. 

On the death of King Arthur all hope of find- 
ing the Holy Graal seemed to vanish. On the 
" Morte d'Arthur " it is written : " This of King 
Arthur, I find no more written in my copy of the 
certainty of his death ; but thus he was led away in 
a barge, wherein were three Queens ; and one was 
King Arthur's sister, Queen Morgan le Fay, and 
there was Nimue, the chief Lady of the Lake. More 
of the death of King Arthur, could I never find. But 
that ladies brought such a one unto burials, that he 
was buried here, that the hermit bare witness that 
sometime was Bishop of Canterbury and dwelled that 
time in a chapel beside Glastonbury. But yet the 
hermit knew not, of a certain, that it was verily the 
body of King Arthur. Some men yet say in many 

* The Heimskringla. Translated by Samuel Laing. Long- 
mans, 1844. Vol. i., p. 225. 

f Macaulay's u History of England," ch.viii. Fourth edition. 



I 



THE UNDYING ONES. 33 



parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but 
had, by the will of our Lord Jesus Christ, into 
another place. And men say that he will come 
again, and he shall win the Holy Cross."* That 
King Arthur is in the Vale of Avalon (of Apples) 
attended by fairies ; that in some regions he has been 
found by shepherds slumbering, like Barbarossa, with 
his knights in a subterranean castle (at Sewingshields 
especially) ; that in others he has been seen, like 
Wodan, at the head of a ghostly hunt by night : 
these are legends found far and wide in British and 
Breton folklore. Tennyson makes Arthur repose in — 

tf The island-valley of Avilion 
Where falls not hail, nor rain, nor any snow, 
Nor ever wind blows loudly ; but it lies 
Deep-meadowed, happy, fair, with orchard lawns, 
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea." 

Germany has many corresponding myths, chief of 
which is that of Frederick I., or Barbarossa, believed 
to be sleeping under Raven's Hill at Kaiserlautern, 
ready to come forth in the last emergency (or glory 
and unity) of his country. There, in his palace (or 

* " La Morte d' Arthur." Compiled by Sir Thomas Mallory 
/""onybeare's edition). Moxon, 1868, p. 404. The Cornish 
legend was that Arthur would return to drive the Saxons from 
Britain. Similar stories are told of Sir Gawaine, Ogier, and 
others. 



34 THE WANDERING JEW. 

grotto) underground, a shepherd once found him sur- 
rounded by his sleeping knights, all in armour ; the 
-horses near by in harness. The red beard, which gave 
the hero his name, had grown through the stone table 
before him, and taken root in the floor. As the shep- 
herd entered, Barbarossa awoke and asked : 

" Are the ravens still flying round the hill ?" 

" Yes." 

" Then must I sleep another hundred years." 

On the evening when the present Emperor of Ger- 
many had reviewed his troops, after his late war with 
France, this legend was represented before him in a 
scries of marvellous tableaux which I witnessed. In 
the last it was shown that the hour had arrived for * 
Frederick the Red Beard to come forth, and it need 
hardly be said that he bore a striking resemblance to 
the Emperor William. In some regions it is said that 
Frau Holda stands beside the slumbering Barbarossa : 
this may have helped to give us our familiar variant 
The Sleeping Beauty. 

It is said that after Pope Paschal III. had made 
Charlemagne a saint, Otho III. (anno 997) opened 
that Emperor's tomb and found him seated on his 
throne, with his crown, imperial robe, and sceptre, 
and on his knees a copy of the Gospels. Beside 
him was his sword Joyeuse, and his pilgrim's pouch. 






THE UNDYING ONES, 35 

So Charlemagne was added to the list of holy 
sleepers. 

In another work I have spoken of these Sleepers, 
and also of the Wanderers * The list of such, too long 
to be given here, includes Tell, in Switzerland ; Boabdil 
of Spain ; Sebastian of Portugal ; Olger Dansk ; 
Thomas of Ercildoune, and many another, down to 
such preternatural if not perpetual sleepers as Rip 
Van Winkle, and the Abbot Cormac of Killarney, 
who listened two hundred years to the singing of a 
nightingale. The Abbot had doubted if he would 
not find the singing of heaven tiresome ; he supposed 
he had listened to the bird a few moments only in 
She wood, but returned to find all changed. The 
legend has inspired one of Allingham's beautiful 
ballads, " The Abbot of Inisfalen." Herodotus (iv. 94) 
relates the tale of Zalmoxis, the Thracian, who, dis- 
gusted with the uncivilised life around him, had a sub- 
terranean hall built and there resided. Some presently 
believed that Zalmoxis never died ; others regarded him 
as a god ; and ultimately it became a custom of the 
Getans to despatch a messenger, every fifth year, to 
him, by hurling some man into the air and catching 

* "Demonology and Devil-lore." (Index.) See Sir G. W. 
Cox, " Mythology of the Aryan Nations." Keightley, " Fairy 
Mythology," i. 74, sq. Folk-lore Record, ii. 1, sg. 

3~2 



36 THE WANDERING JEW. 

him on javelins. If the victim dies Zalmoxis is pro- 
pitious. Plutarch relates a story similar to this (De 
Defect. Orac), as told by one Cleombrotus, concerning 
an Oriental personage who appeared among his 
fellow-men only once a year. The rest of his life was 
passed among friendly nymphs and demons, and as 
these are said to have rendered him proof against 
disease it may be supposed that he was one of the 
undying. 

Similar legends are indeed found among the 
aboriginal races of North America. Such heroes as 
Booin (Nova Scotia) and Hiawatha were supposed 
never to have died. Booin was carried to a happy 
land inside a friendly whale, whom he compensated ^ 
with the tobacco which the Micmacs still see smoking 
in the spout of that animal ; and Hiawatha " sailed 
into the purple sunset." To these good Indians 
migrate when they die. The Incas of Peru also 
were found believing that the founder of their 
kingdom never died, but would return to restore its 
ancient splendours. The Muyscas of Bogota relate 
that the first lawgiver of Bochica lived among their 
tribe 2000 years, then " withdrew," and he is now 
known as Idacanzas.* 

It is interesting to compare such primitive forms of 
* Tylor, Primitive Cttliure, i. 318 



' 



THE UNDYING ONES. 37 

the myth with those assumed by it amid the advanced 
phases of Animism. Tithonus, for whom Eos ob- 
tained the gift of immortality but not that of per- 
petual youth, whom divine pity changed into a grass- 
hopper, became the proverbial title of a decrepit old 
man, and represents the nearest approach to an 
earthly immortal in Greek mythology. The immortals 
exist indeed, but in changed forms, or even if the 
human powers be preserved it must be in Hades, as 
in the case of Teiresias. The Glaucus-myth, running 
through several variants, shows the evolution of this 
class of myths. Surviving all ordeals in Crete — 
the sea, the cask of honey, the serpent's bite — he 
* becomes on the Corinthian coast an evil ghost, and 
in Bceotia a marine deity. In classic ages every 
hero has his vulnerable point where he is sure to be 
touched at last 



! 



III. 

SOURCES OF THE MYTH. 

ALTHOUGH, as we have seen, the myths of the 
undying ones are found among races so widely 
separate that they must often be of independent 
origin, many of them are ethnically related. This is 
the case with a series of such, now to be considered,^ 
which bear upon the fable of the Wandering Jew. 

The earliest myth of this character is probably 
that of the Iranian Yima, King of the Golden Age in 
Persia. This beautiful myth is found in the Zend- 
avesta, and in the Vendidad which Haug traces, in 
its earlier parts, to an antiquity not far short of 
Zoroaster himself, not less than a thousand years 
before our era. In the Zendavesta it is declared : 
" During the happy reign of Yima there was neither 
cold nor heat, neither decay nor death, nor malice 
produced by the demons ; father and son walked 



SOURCES OF THE MYTH. 39 

forth, each fifteen years old in appearance." With 
Yima was Armaiti, the divine woman, genius of the 
earth, who by promoting culture, recovering wilder- 
nesses and converting nomadic tribes to peaceful 
cultivators, expanded the earth to thrice its original 
size ; and over this paradise Yima reigned nine 
hundred years. After the evils of winter had come 
over his country Yima led a select number of his 
friends to a secluded spot, where they enjoy perfect 
happiness * Armaiti still, in Parsi faith, remained at 
her work, upholding the earth in her maternal arms, 
ever working against the powers of evil ; and when 
she shall have prevailed, Yima is to come back again 
and lead in the Golden Year. 

It is an instance of the unconscious poetry of 
humanity that this Iranian Yima is one with Yama, 
the Vedic King of the Dead ! The idea may have 
originally been the declining sun ;f but there are 
other characters than darkness about the sunset ; 
there are splendours also, and often the western 
horizon is painted with radiant islets which to 
primitive man seemed a part of his planet. It may 
even have been that the westward course of human 
migration was guided by this permanent pillar of 

* Haug's Essays, etc., p. 277. 

t Max M tiller's Science of Language, vol. ii. p. 563. 



4 o THE WANDERING JEW. 

Fire which every evening lit up the Hesperian 
Gardens and Isles of the Blest. 

This migration on earth and sea corresponds with 
a mental and spiritual migration. Exploration of 
the Edens, Gan-Edens, Avalons, Hesperides, At- 
lantises, turns them to parts of the prosaic world 
while it raises the ideals that hovered over them to 
rosy cloud-lands which cannot yet be explored. 
No Yima found anywhere on earth ! And so 
it begins to be sung of him that he has passed 
to some region not exactly upon earth. Now 
it is said, this time in the Rigveda (x. 14, 1, 2) : 
"Yama, the king, the gatherer of the people, has 
descried a path for many, which leads from the 
depths to the heights ; he first found out a resting- 
place from which nobody can turn out the occupants ; 
on the way the forefathers have gone, the sons will 
follow them." Finally, as Haug remarks : " This 
happy ruler of the blessed in Paradise has been 
transformed, in the modern Hindu mythology, into 
the fearful god of death, the inexorable judge of 
men's doings, and the punisher of the wicked." 

For a long time after their constitution as a people, 
the Jews had no definite faith in the immortality of 
the soul, and there is no text in the Old Testament 
which clearly teaches that doctrine. It has been 



I 



SOURCES OF THE MYTH. 41 

thought by some that their adoption of that doctrine 
was coincident with their decline from greatness as a 
nation.* Jehovah still walked amid the pleasant 
shade-trees of Paradise, and there Enoch walked with 
him. Out of this belief in an earthly immortality 
grew the earlier form of belief in the life after death, 
which insisted on corporeal resurrection. As time 
went on, and the numbers for whom immortality 
was claimed grew, and as exploration discovered no 
earthly Eden in which these resided, paradise neces- 
sarily ascended to an aerial realm. But its earthly 
characteristics were preserved. Thence angels passed 
to earth and back on a ladder, and thence came the 
chariot and horses which appeared when Elias was 
borne away by a sufficiently strong whirlwind. That 
he was ' carried to the sky' marks, however, a step 
away from the earthly abode, in the direction taken 
by the myth which turned Yima to Yama. 

But the Jews introduced into their belief in certain 
undying ones an important feature, drawn from their 
imported dualistic philosophy, which marshalled 
everything and every being, small or large, on one 
side or the other of the great war between Ormuzd 
and Ahriman. Beside the hero, too holy to die, is 

* See the statement by one of the interlocutors in Dr. Kalisch's 
admirable work Path and Goal, p. 348. (Longmans, 18S0.) 



42 THE WANDERING JEW. 

seen the man of sin, to whom the repose of the grave 
is forbidden. The books of our Bible were written 
after ancient traditions, and gathered together when 
other ideas were predominant ; and it is rather by 
intimations there found, and by references to rab- 
binical and Arabian folk-lore, that we can get at these 
primitive fables. 

In the first epoch we find counterparts in Cain and 
Seth. Even the Biblical narrative seems to point to 
a primitive myth, in which these two were good and 
evil immortals, which had gone to pieces before the 
book of Genesis was compiled.* At any rate at an 
early age the pieces had been put together by the 
Semitic imagination. It is said (Gen. iv. 25) that Eve 
called this her third son Seth {scion or germ) : " for," 
she said, " God hath appointed me another seed in 
place of Abel, whom Cain slew." The Talmudic book, 
Skene Lnchoth, says that the soul of Abel (breath) 
passed into Seth, and again into Moses, Josephus 
(Ant. i. 2) shows that Seth was venerated as one 
possessed of great knowledge, which he engraved on 
two pillars. Suidas says Seth was the first to hear 
the name of God. In the fourth century there was a 

* See Ewald's Geschichte des Volkes Israel, i. 353 (Russell 
Martineau's Translation, p. 264, sq.). For traditions concerning 
Seth, see also my Demonology and Devil-lore, as per Index. 



SOURCES OF THE MYTH. 43 

sect of Sethians, who, according to Epiphanius, identi- 
fied Seth with the Messiah (Adv. Haer. i. 3, 39). In 
the line of Seth were born the long-lived beings, some 
of whom lived above nine hundred years, and one of 
whom was Enoch, who did not die at all. Many of the 
names resemble those in the line of Cain — and were 
no doubt taken from it — Cain-an, Mahalaleel, Jared, 
Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech. It is evident that the 
Seth legend was introduced to avoid having the 
human race descend from the first murderer and type 
of evil — Cain. 

Cain was the first Wandering Jew. His name, 
signifying a spear, and Tubal-Cain, " son of a spear," 
first artificer in brass and iron, suggest the possibility 
that his doom may have been that of a Semitic Pro- 
metheus. At any rate the curse pronounced upon 
him (" a fugitive and a wanderer shalt thou be in the 
earth ") ; the mark (token, or perhaps weird) fixed 
upon him, that none should slay him ; the land to 
which he wandered, itself meaning flight (Nod) — sup- 
plied ample materials for the mother-myth of eternal 
Wanderers. Of Cain, however, more will be said at a 
further stage of our inquiry. 

Enoch represents the first personage of Biblical 
record clearly corresponding to Yima. " Enoch 
walked with Elohim and was no more [seen among 



44 THE WANDERING JEW. 

men], for Elohim took him." With regard to the 
solar character of the Enoch-myth we cannot concern 
ourselves here. As his name indicates Enoch is the 
Beginner, like Yima, of whom Ahuramazda says, "with 
him I conversed first among men " (Vendidad, ii. 2). 
It is especially noticeable that Enoch " walks " with 
Elohim, whom we before find " walking in the garden " 
(Gen. iii. 8). A heavenly abode is not yet imagined 
Even the Koran, when it speaks of Enoch (Erdris), 
hesitates to affirm his translation to heaven, but says, 
" We exalted him to a high place." 

The evil counterpart of Enoch is Lamech, who, 
although his death at the age of 777 is recorded in the 
later Sethite line, identifies himself as a deathless 
wanderer with Cain in the lines which, as Ewald 
thinks, probably gave rise to the Cain story 
itself: 

Adah and Zillah, hear my voice ! 

Ye wives of Lamech, hearken to my speech ! 
For the man I slew for my own wound, 

The child I struck dead on account of my own hurt • 
Was Cain avenged seven times ? 

Lamech will be seven and seventy times ! 

In the third epoch we find Esau a restless evil 
wanderer, fulfilling the destiny prononnced by his 
father, gradually personifying Edom, the antagonist 



SOURCES OF THE MYTH. 45 

of Israel. The corresponding immortal is Judah, 
from whose hand the sceptre was not to depart till 
Shiloh come. The death of neither of these is men- 
tioned ; Edom and Judah remained to carry on their 
phantasmal war to the last — as Satan and Jahve, as 
Sammael and Michael. 

The mysterious account, in Deut. xxxiv., of the 
death of Moses, suggests the existence at some period 
of a popular belief that he did not die in the ordinary 
sense. It is said, by one rendering, that he died " on 
the mouth of Jahve " ; "his eye was not dim nor his 
natural strength abated " ; Jahve knew him " face to 
face," and himself buried him in a valley, in a place 
unknown to this day. According to the Talmud, 
Enoch, Moses, and Elias, are brought up by Michael 
to be changed into angels. (Kalisch, Comm. on O. T., 
II. p. 307.) This association of Moses with the two 
who notoriously had not died is significant. In the 
Book of " The Assumption of Moses " the demon who 
tried to get the body of Moses, as mentioned in Jude 
ix., is called Sammael. This had long been the name 
for Esau-Edom ; and there is also in this coincidence 
the intimation of an early legend which brought Moses 
slumbering in his Moabite cave into mythological 
relation with restless Esau, ever wandering amid the 
dark mountains. The presence of Moses at the trans- 



46 THE WANDERING JEW. 

figuration of Jesus in company with Elias, who never 
died, would alone show that belief in his earthly im- 
mortality had prevailed. In addition, there are intima- 
tions of such a tradition amongthe Arabs. The Moslems 
make pilgrimages to Neby Musa, near Jericho, as the 
sepulchre of Moses, and their legend is as follows : 
God had promised to leave Moses in this world until 
he should voluntarily descend into a tomb. After 
Moses had lived 120 years, he was one day walking 
and saw four men (angels) excavating a chamber in a 
rock, as, they said, a hiding-place for their king's most 
precious treasure. The cavern offered a tempting 
retreat from the sun's rays, and Moses reclined in it. 
One of the workmen gave him a delicious apple. No 
sooner had he inhaled its scent than "he fell 
asleep."* 

An evil counterpart of Moses may be found in the 
tradition — very important to the legend of the 
Wandering Jew, as we shall presently see — that the 
maker of the Golden Calf was doomed to a fate much 
like that of Cain. There arose a proverb among the 
Jews that " no punishment befalleth the Israelites in 
which there is not an ounce of this calf." Although 
in the Bible the fashioning of this idol is distinctly 

* Pierotti ; Customs and Traditions of Palestine. 



SOURCES OF THE MYTH. 47 

ascribed to Aaron, he was not among the three 
thousand slain on account of it, but was pardoned. 
Moses says, " The Lord was very angry with Aaron to 
have destroyed him : and I prayed for Aaron at the 
same time " (Deut. ix. 20). Semitic Folk-lore has been 
still more merciful to Aaron's reputation, at cost of 
the Samaritans, and made it out that the Golden Calf 
was fashioned by one Samiri, or Al Sameri. " The 
devil," says Jonathan, " got into the metal and 
fashioned it into a calf." The Koran says the calf 
lowed, and in Arabian tradition Al Sameri took some 
dust from the footsteps of the horse of Gabriel, who 
rode at the head of Israel, and threw it in the calf s 
W mouth, which began to low. 

Now, many of the Samaritans themselves, about the 
first century of our era, gathered about one Dositheus 
as their Messiah (Origen, De Princ. iv. c. 17; Epi- 
phanius, Hceres. xiii.). His pretensions brought upon 
Dositheus an order for his arrest from the Samaritan 
high-priest, from which he escaped and hid in a cave. 
There, according to some, he starved to death ; but 
his followers continued to believe that he was alive 
and would reappear. It is possible that Al Sameri 
means " the Samaritan " — i.e. Dositheus or Dusis — 
and that he thus became the mythical scapegoat for 
Aaron's offence. G. Weil (The Bible, the Koran, and 



48 THE WANDERING JEW. 

the Talmud) says : " Moses then summoned Samiri, 
and would have put him to death instantly, but Allah 
directed that he should be sent into banishment. 
Ever since that time he roams like a wild beast 
throughout the world ; everyone shuns him and puri- 
fies the ground on which his feet have stood ; and he 
himself, whenever he approaches men, exclaims : 
" Touch me not !" 

In the Koran (Sale, xx.) it is declared that Moses 
said to Al Sameri, " Get thee gone ; for thy punish- 
ment in this life shall be that thou shalt say unto 
those who shall meet thee, Touch me not !" Al 
Beidawi is quoted by Sale as interpreting this to mean 
that infection would follow the touch, but to Al «* 
Sameri ; ultimately, however, the fear was on the other 
side. It was believed that Al Sameri repaired to an 
island in the Red Sea, where his wretched descendants 
dwell, and whence issue plagues. Whenever a ship 
comes near the inhabitants raise the warning cry, 
" Touch me not ! M 

Al Beidawi also says that Al Sameri's real name 
was Moses, or Musa Ebn Dhafar, which seems to 
suggest that he was regarded as the counterpart of 
Moses ; and also as a source of pestilence he would be 
the opposite of Moses, whose medical skill was 
famous. 



SOURCES OF THE MYTH. 49 

Although it may anticipate somewhat the later 
developments of our myth, it may be well to suggest 
here the probability that the traditional idea, pre- 
served in the romance of Eugene Sue and elsewhere, 
that the Wandering Jew carried the plague from city 
to city, may have been connected with this legendary 
Red Sea Island. Its real origin may have been in 
the actual diseases bred in the wretched quarters in 
which Jews were crowded by a suicidal inhumanity, and 
from which every Jewish traveller and trader had to go. 

The next undying one is Elias. The idea of 
Jahve's earthly abode had grown dim, at least, and 
Eden had- begun to ascend amid the roseate clouds 
when this legend was formed. The terrestrial chariot 
and horses are present, but a whirlwind is needed to 
carry them with the prophet to heaven. The narra- 
tive seems meant to admit of either theory — a heavenly 
or an earthly paradise. There Elias remained as a 
kind of iEolus, literally as on earth a weather-pro- 
phet ; and to this day in Greece, and many parts of 
the East, when a severe storm with lightning arises, 
the peasants say, " Elias goes forth in his chariot !"* 

* When the abyss between biblical and other mythology has 
ceased to be so convenient, perhaps there may be traced some 
connection between the ravens that fed Elias and those birds 
of Odin that circle around Raven's Hill where Barbarossa sleeps ; 
and also between Elias and our folk-tales of yEolus. 



I 



So THE WANDERING JEW. 

In folk-lore Elias unites in himself characteristics 
both of the Sleepers and Wanderers. In some regions 
he is supposed to have employed his leisure in paradise 
with writing a book. In Moslem legend he is a 
Wanderer. A powerful sheikh, they say, wished to 
utilise the miraculous gifts of Elias, and had him 
chained. The tyrant led him over his lands because 
his " footsteps were blessed," but at the prophet's every 
step the fields withered. The sheikh was about to 
slay Elias, when the prophet asked permission to 
quench his thirst at what is now called the " sealed 
fountain," near Bethlehem. The tyrant held the chain 
which, however, elongated itself : the bonds fell off, 
the rock closed behind him, and since then Elias " has 
continued to travel over the whole world, rendering 
every place verdant on which he treads." The 
" sealed fountain " of the rains, which only Elias could 
unseal in the time of drouth, would appear in this 
myth to feel its relation with the Sun. One need not 
wonder that Dr. Schliemann found a Greek church 
consecrated to Elias on the site of a temple of 
Helios.* 

* It would be an interesting question, but one that cannot be 
discussed here, to consider how far'the idea of eternal Wan- 
derers may have been primarily connected with the ever-return- 
ing heavenly bodies. Ewald and Goldziher agree that the years 
of Enoch's visible life, 365, indicate the solar year. Ewald 
thinks he was probably a god of the New Year. 



I SOURCES OF THE MYTH. 51 

The Dualism which in the Semitic Mythology di- 
vided the undying ones into good and evil, is generally 
found in the corresponding traditions of other regions. 
We find good and evil counterparts in Barbarossa and 
Wodan ; in the Wild Huntsman, and faithful Eckhardt 
who warns of his approach ; in King Arthur wander- 
ing as a raven, contrasted with Merlin, bound for 
ever in his prison of air by the spell of Vivien ; in 
the German Monk Felix (who, like Abbot Cormac, 
listened for centuries to the singing bird, W. Grimm, 
Altdeutsche Walder, ii. 70), with King Herla, who 
was similarly bewitched by the evil dwarf to whose 
wedding he went ; in Siegfried, with Van der Decken, 
^ who swore his ship should round the Cape, " despite 
God or Devil, if it took till judgment," and is now 
the Flying Dutchman ; in Tannhauser, with Lohen- 
grin ; in Ogier among the fairies of Morgana, with 
the Gros Veneur ; in the Seven Sleepers of Tours, 
with Hugo wandering beside their grotto. 



IV. 

THE LEGENDS GENERALISED. 

If we examine well the account in the Zendavesta 
of the paradise wherein Yima walked with Ahuram- 
azda, and that in Genesis of Eden where Enoch 
walked with Elohim, we can hardly fail to recognise 
in them the germ of the Messianic dream. The 
visions of the renovated earth described by Philo, A 
and in the Sibylline Oracles, and in the Apocalypse 
of Baruch, are but realistic expansions of those 
happy retreats of the holy ones who were not sup- 
posed to taste corruption.* In this idealised earth 
were gathered the beauties and joys of many 
Gulistans. 

And, similarly, he who was to reign over the im- 
paradised in this perfected earth was to be an im- 

* See Professor Drummond's "The Jewish Messiah," etc. 
In Haug's Essays will be found a full account of Yima and his 
earthly paradise. 



< 



THE LEGENDS GENERALISED, 53 



mortal king returning from his Avalon, invested with 
the attributes of all the incorruptible. These had 
been gradually raised into an abstract personality — 
the "Angel-Messiah," to which Mr. Ernest de Bunsen 
has given such patient research with many interesting 
results — who, however, was purely a terrestrial being, 
a Son of Man. 

The phrase " Ancient of Days," used three times in 
Daniel vii., and the snow-white hair there ascribed to 
that being, who gives dominion to the Son of Man 
brought before him, convey the idea of a being that 
has lived through all changes, a memory and conscious- 
ness in which the ages broken up to mortal eyes are 
/'knit together, and therefore able to be a providence 
and a retributive judge. Viceroy of this Ancient of 
Days is the immortal man in whose unbroken con- 
sciousness all history is embodied : he is the earthly 
providence. Before Abraham was, he is. He abides 
with the Ancient in his earthly dwelling, but goes 
forth at appointed periods for certain purposes. He 
is the " Son of Man " as distinguished from the sons 
of Kings ; reigns not by succession but by election of 
the Deity manifested in signs and marvels, such as the 
carrier dove bringing the divine sanction to emperors 
who break the order of legitimacy. No incarnation 
was imagined ; the avatars of this Son of Man are the 



\ 



54 THE WANDERING JEW. 

Apparitions of one always in the earth, but able to 
render himself invisible, or who assumes an humble dis- 
guise. This disguise may be thrown off occasionally 
in some solitary place, for a select few who are charged 
with secresy. 

This Messiah gathered up in his person the powers 
and glories of past saints and heroes, and it was expected 
that these would attend him at the supreme scene of 
his coronation on earth. Elias was to appear as his 
herald. In Seder 'Olam Rabbah it is said, " In the 
second year of the reign of Ahaziah, Elias became 
hidden, [to be] seen no more until King Messiah shall I 
come, when he will be again seen, and hidden s.jm 
second time, and not seen again until Gog and Magog 
come. And now he writes down the work of all the 
generations." It was asked of John the Baptist " Art 
thou Elias ?" and next u Art thou that prophet f* 
Who was this prophet popularly thus associated with 
Messianic expectations ? Professor Drummond sug- 
gests that it was Jeremiah, and cites the vision of 
Judas Maccabseus, in which he saw, beside Onias the 
high-priest, " a man with grey hairs and exceeding 
glorious/' who was declared to be Jeremiah, " who 
offers many prayers for the people and the holy city." 
Jeremiah gave Judas a golden sword, and told him to 
wound the adversaries. 



THE LEGENDS GENERALISED. 55 

On the nether side of this Messianic dream we find 
a pit or underworld — some region which could not 
mar the fair face of the perfect earth — which is an 
outcome of the wilderness of Dendain, Cain's Land, 
every weird desolation. And the king of this region 
sums up in himself the line of eternal evil wanderers 
— Cain, Lamech, Esau, Samuel — in a personification 
of hostility to the Messiah. This generalised Oppo- 
sition — called Armillus among the Jews, Al Dajjail 
by the Mussulmans — corresponds exactly with 
Antichrist among the early Christians. It was said 
Armillus was to be born out of a marble statue in a 
church at Rome (the ne plus ultra of earthly in- 
fernalism to a race detesting graven images and vic- 
timised by Rome), and that Christendom would 
worship him until the true Messias (Ben David) 
should appear, and, as says the Targum (Isa. xi. 4.) 
" By the word of his mouth the wicked Armillus shall 
die." 



V. 

TRANSFIGURATION. 

THOUGH the alleged longevity of the Jewish patri- 
archs temporarily made up for the absence of the 
conception of immortality, this idea arrived. The 
representatives of Seth live above an average of 
nine centuries each, with one remarkable excep- 
tion : Enoch, the best of them, lives less than half 
the years of the least. Whatever may have been 
the original reason for this exception, the explana- 
tion was that Enoch really outstripped even the 
969 years of Methuselah, having never died at 
all. In paradise he would have access to the Tree 
of Life. In the farther development of Israel other 
" beginners " — as Moses representing Law, and Elias 
Prophecy — might eclipse Enoch, and wear "by 
authority " his mantle of immortality ; but in popular 
faith and folk-lore Enoch held his own. He was said 
to have invented writing, arithmetic, and astronomy ; 



TRANS FIG URA TION. 57 

to have filled 300 volumes with the knowledge acquired 
by long residence among the angels ; his first being a 
book predicting the Deluge, which was preserved by- 
Noah in the Ark. In many respects Enoch resembles 
Teiresias, to whom Zeus granted a life on earth of 
seven or nine generations, and who even in Hades 
was said by Homer to have retained his human 
perception, while those around him were mere shades 
(Plato, Meno, 100).* His fame as a soothsayer, both 
on earth and in Hades, grew out of the belief in his 
long experience, and no doubt this was the case with 
Enoch also. Most folk- sayings and predictions were 
connected with Enoch as forged runes and verses 
are now attributed to Mother Shipton. (It will be 
remembered that the first English book on this theme 
was entitled The Wandering Jew telling fortunes to 
Englishmen, 1640.) It might have been supposed 
that Enoch would be present at the Transfiguration 
of Jesus. Paul had spoken of him with honour ; 
Jude quoted from him ; and it is probable that he 
was meant as one of the " two witnesses " alluded 

* The blindness ascribed to Teiresias presents a curious 
coincidence with that attributed to Lamech in Legendary Art, 
which leads to his accidentally killing Cain with an arrow. In 
both cases the significance probably is that of one who is blind 
to immediate consequences while seeing or carrying out the 
decrees of Fate. 



58 THE WANDERING JEW. 

to in Rev. xi. 3. In the Gospel of Nicodemus the 
" two witnesses " are Enoch and Elias, who wel- 
come those arriving in Paradise. 

That Moses was substituted for Elias at the Trans- 
figuration was probably due to the strong hold which 
the " Book of Enoch " had taken on the Jewish mind. 
In this work there are indications that among some 
Jews Enoch himself had become connected with the 
Messianic hope. The writer, personating Enoch and 
speaking in his name, describes his journey through 
heaven .and hell; thus, in the second century B.C. 
anticipating the journeys and visions of Lucian, 
Mohammed, Arda Viraf, Dante, and Swedenborg. 
He is attended by an angel, and he is named and ^ 
appointed the Son of Man. " That angel came to 
me, and with his voice greeted me and said, Thou art 
the Son of Man who is born to righteousness ; and 
righteousness dwells over thee, and the righteousness 
of the Head of Days leaves thee not." That a claim 
for Enoch's Messiaship is intended appears in the 
event then described. Enoch's body melts away, and 
his spirit is transformed into a heavenly body. Enoch 
had described the glory of the renovated earth ; but 
he himself, assuming him alive, would be some 2000 
years old. No legend said he had been endowed with 
perpetual youth ; consequently to reign over a re- 



TRANS FIG URA TION. 59 

juvenated earth he must be rejuvenated himself. Such 
a notion could only., at that time, have survived among 
the ignorant ; but it is to them that new " schools " 
have to make their appeal, and in the transfigura- 
tion of Enoch the old idea, though spiritualised, is re- 
garded. 

The phrase of the Book of Enoch, " Head of Days," 
is a remarkable modification of Daniel's " Ancient of 
Days." It almost looks as if, — assuming Ewald's 
theory that Enoch (Beginner) was a god of the New 
Year, — this earliest of the immortals were still invested 
with more than patriarchal sanctity. As a Janus 
or Ganeca (with whom Ewald compares him) Enoch 
would himself be the Head of Days, thus as it were 
the Ancient of Days dialed on time. The idea of co- 
eternal existence is suggested, but also of an Un- 
changeable and a Changeable. 

It must be remembered that we are considering 
ideas which, however poetical, are based on fancies 
of the world's childhood. The transformation of 
Enoch under the angel's spell belongs to the same 
class as the transformations which Yuletide evokes 
for the delight of the young from our own German 
Mythology, in which deforming spells are broken, 
handsome princes step forth from bears or dwarfs, 
decrepit crones become fair maidens, and Cinderellas 



60 THE WANDERING JEW. 

rise from their ashes and rags in shining raiment and 
beauty. 

When the Jewish legends were transferred to the 
Gentile world this incident (of transfiguration) was 
detached from the patriarch and connected with the 
generalised type of Israel which represented the 
popularisation of its faith among other races. 
Probably the Transfiguration, concerning which 
secrecy was demanded, was first whispered about 
in the Jewish quarters of Rome. In the New Testa- 
ment narrative the Transfiguration comes as a 
tableau at the end of a conversation immediately 
bearing upon the subject of the undying ones. 
After being told, in answer to his question, that 
some thought he was John the Baptist (in whose 
death probably his followers refused to believe), 
others thought him Elias, others Jeremiah, Jesus 
asked, " But whom say ye that I am ?" Peter said, 
" Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." 
This was the Christian equivalent of the address of 
the Angel to Enoch, quoted above. Jesus then as- 
sumes the Messiaship ; founds his church, declares 
his future course and office, and ends by transferring 
to the patriarchs of the new kingdom the mantle of 
earthly immortality worn by the Jewish patriarchs. 
" Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here 



TRANSFIGURATION. 61 

which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of 
Man coming in his kingdom.'' The next thing related 
is the Transfiguration. " His face did shine as the 
sun, and his raiment was white as the light." Luke 
says, "The fashion of his countenance was altered, 
and his face was white and glistering." Beside him 
are Moses and Elias, whose office as surviving witnesses 
is falling upon their successors — James (here the 
brother of Jesusj. who was miraculously supported 
without food from the crucifixion until after the 
resurrection, and after death rose again for an im- 
portant legendary career ; and John, who was to 
"tarry" till Christ should come.* Peter could only 
survive by proxy : it would have been inconvenient to 
have him often interfering with the arrangements of 
his successor, as in the one case of his reappearance, 
when he supplanted a Bishop in consecrating the first 
Abbot of Westminster, leaving the Deans thereof 
perilously independent ever since. As Enoch was 
omitted from the scene because he was a rival Messiah, 
Peter received no mantle of immortality because he 
might become an invisible rival Vicar. 

* Mrs. Jameson {Sacred and Legendary Art, i., 208) has 
given fully the legend of St. James. In the year 936 he appeared 
to King Ramirez in Spain promising him a victory over the 
Moors, and, on the following day, he (St. James) appeared at 
the head of the army on a milk-white horse, when sixty thousand 
Moors were slain ; hence the Spanish war-cry " Santiago." 



62 THE WANDERING JEW. 

The transfigured representative of the " Head of 
Days " was there, but not the transfigured world. 
The event was as a rehearsal ; the actual perform- 
ance had to be postponed for a thousand years. The 
hopes of those who had expected to see the thorn- 
crown changed to a coronet and the crucified Jew 
appearing, resplendent with the aureole of Moses and 
the chariot of Elias, to enter on his kingdom, faded 
away. It was replaced by the rumours that Jesus 
and a few chosen friends were invisibly moving near, 
and would befriend the faithful unto the millennial 
hour. Then they should all awaken from what, for 
believers who had eaten the vitalising body and 
blood of Christ, would be but a sleep. A 

Animistic philosophy in the second century was 
such as to admit of the transient death of a Messiah 
provided his body was not supposed to be left long 
enough under ground to taste corruption. The 
Psalm (xvi. 10) said, " Thou wilt not suffer thy holy 
one to see corruption ;" but, as in the case of Alcestis, 
a human being might live again if wrested from death 
by the third day. In the case of Lazarus the miracle 
consisted in the recovery of life after the body had 
been buried four days. The resurrection of Christ, so 
far from being a proof of human immortality, mani- 
festly means that Jesus did not die in the ordinary 



L 



TRANSFIGURATION, 63 

sense, but recovered in the sepulchre the ghost he had 
breathed out on the cross. In theological statement 
he might be thought of as dwelling in heaven ; but 
for a long time his ascension into heaven was as 
much an excursion as his descent into hell ; in both 
he but went through the role of Enoch, and in 
Christian folk-tales he was still " always with them/' 
moving near, as when he met Peter near Rome, where 
his foot-prints are still worshipped.* 

That which was Job's aspiration had become the 
humble Christian's faith. Unable amid perishing 
nature to believe that one who died could live 
again, Job wishes that he could be hid "in the 
under-world/' concealed for "an appointed time, then 
remembered." All the days of his hard time there he 
would await his " change." And finally he does believe 
that his Vindicator will secure something like this ; 
not that he expects to live for ever, but, however 
wasted his body, he will live long enough to see 
Elohim no longer an adversary, but on his side. 
With Paul this belief has arrived at the phase of 
comparing the human body to a seed which rises to a 
flower. After the alleged resurrection of Jesus it was 
evidently important to show that it was the same 

* The sacred footprints of Christ are also pointed out on the 
Mount of Olives, and at Poitiers, Aries, Fecamp, Rheims, and 
Soissons. 



64 THE WANDERING JEW. 

body, even to its wounds, but at the same time so 
transformed that it was with difficulty recognised, and 
was mistaken for a spirit. In the Gospel according to 
the Hebrews (Nicholson, p. 68) it is written, after the 
story of James living without food until he saw Jesus 
risen from the dead, that " when he (Jesus) cam e 
to those about Peter, he said to them, 'Take, feel 
me, and see that I am not a bodiless daemon/ " 
Ignatius, who preserved this, says {Ep. ad Smyrwzjs, 
c. iii.), "I both know that he was in the flesh after 
the resurrection and believe that he is [in it]. . . . 
And straightway they touched him and believed, being 
constrained by his flesh and spirit Because of 
this they thought lightly even of death, and were 
found superior to death. And after the resurrection 
he ate and drank with them as one in the flesh 
though spiritually united to the Father." 

The main difficulty about earthly immortality, pre- 
sented in the shrivelled form of Tithonus, solved in 
Enoch's case by transfiguration, was settled in later 
mythologies by the theory of a fountain of Perpetual 
Youth. When Ponce de Leon heard of the New 
World he hastened thither to find this Fountain : in 
the depths of luxuriant Florida he searched, and 
never reappeared. 



- 



VI. 

MANTLES OF THE IMMORTALS. 

We have already seen that in the Gospel of Nicodemus 
(xxv.), Enoch and Elias are represented as welcoming 
those who arrive in Paradise. In an Arabian legend 
Grasse finds an important form of this tradition. It is 
said that Enoch and Elias came to the Land of Dark- 
ness, and there drank of the fountain of Perpetual 
Youth ; and thenceforth, one on land, the other on sea, 
they went about to watch over pilgrims, much the same 
as Castor and Pollux, who guarded wanderers. In the 
intervals of such services they rest in gardens amid all 
earthly joys. Towards the end of the world they will 
appear to prepare the way for the Messiah. But in the 
sixteenth year of the Hegira, Elias had not yet found 
the Fountain. When the Arabians had conquered a 
certain city they rested between two mountains of 
Syria. At night when Fadilah, their commander, 

5 



I 



65 THE WANDERING JEW. 

began to pray, " Allah Akbar," a voice pronounced 
the words and continued to the end of the prayer. 
Fadilah at first thought it an echo, but presently knew 
it could not be such, and appealed to him who had 
spoken, if man and not a ghost, to appear. Then an 
aged man with a staff appeared, and said, " I am here 
by command of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has left 
me in this world until his second coming. Therefore 
I await this Lord who is the source of all happiness." 
He gave his name as Zerib Ben Bar Elia. Fadilah 
having asked if the end of the world were near or far, 
Elia answered, "When there shall be no difference 
in sex between men and women ; when the blood of 
innocents shall be shed ; when abundance of food ■ 
shall not lessen its price; when the poor beg alms 
without finding anything to live on ; when love to 
man shall be lost ; when the Holy Scriptures shall be 
put into songs ; when temples dedicated to the true 
God are filled with idols — then be sure that the Day 
of Judgment is near !" Whereupon the old man dis- 
appeared.* 

Occasionally the cant of persons pretending to be 

the Wandering Jew has faintly echoed this Eastern 

specimen. As for the " two witnesses," it may be 

remembered that we have already noticed (I.) efforts 

* Herbelot : Bibl, Orient, iii. p. 607 (ref. by Grasse). 



MANTLES OF THE IMMORTALS. 67 

made in the seventeenth century to prove that two 
survivors from the time of the Crucifixion existed. 
This could be done by regarding Cartaphilus (' the 
famous Joseph ') and Ahasuerus as different persons. 
Or it may have been that Joseph and Malchus were 
thought of, especially in Italy, where these seem to 
have been the corresponding figures. 

Jewish superstitions of this character were rein- 
forced from another direction. The Greeks had their 
legend of the long sleep of Epimenides on the Isle of 
Knossus. Epimenides being one of the Seven Sages, 
there might easily grow from his legend that of the 
Seven Sleepers. 

The familiar form of this legend is that given by 
Gibbon (xxxiii), who follows Gregory of Tours, as an 
incident of the Decian persecution. It is also in the 
Koran (xviii.). Goethe follows the Koran mainly in 
his poem on the subject, but assigns the legend to a 
pre-Christian period, no doubt on good grounds. 
According to this version the Sleepers were youths of 
Caesar's household who refused to worship that emperor 
when he proclaimed himself a god ; saying they would 
worship him alone who had created the sun, moon, 
and stars. Thereupon they departed, but Caesar pur- 
sued them ; and when they had taken refuge in a 
cavern near Ephesus, the emperor walled up the en- 

5—2 



68 THE WANDERING JEW. 

trance, so that they could not escape. After the 
lapse of some centuries the wall gave way, and one of 
them entered Ephesus to buy bread. He offered an 
ancient coin ; was suspected of having found treasure ; 
but by telling of various things hidden about the city, 
unknown before, the story of the miraculous slumber 
was confirmed. When the king and others went out 
to visit the youths, the Angel Gabriel appeared, 
closed the cavern, and led the Seven into Paradise. 
According to the version which Goethe used, one of 
the Seven was a faithful dog which had accom- 
panied the six young men, and passed into paradise 
Avith them.* 

The tale of the Wanderings of Odysseus would 
appear to have touched the Spanish variant of the 
Seven Sleepers myth, which probably influenced the 
mind of Columbus. According to this story, Seven 
Bishops, flying from persecution, sailed westward and 
reached a beautiful island where they built seven 
splendid cities. This was dreamed of as the ' Island 
of the Seven Cities ' (Baring-Gould, Curious Myths y 
ii. 277). A legend told by Washington Irving 

* A curious instance of the supremacy of the artist over the 
man, when Goethe's horror of dogs is remembered. Goethe 
threw up his connection with Weimar Theatre because Carl 
August insisted on admitting, to 'perform' on the stage, the 
animal which this poem introduces into Paradise. 



MANTLES OF THE IMMORTALS. 69 

relates that Don Fernando was wafted to this 
island, where he dwelt in great happiness, until he one 
day sank into unconsciousness. When he awakened 
from this Circe spell, he found himself on his ship 
near the Iberian coast. He repaired to the house of 
a lady to whom he was affianced ; she disclaimed all 
knowledge of him ; and when he addressed her by 
name it appeared that he was thinking of her great- 
grandmother, whom she closely resembled.* 

These mingled Greek and Jewish traditions came 
into Christendom mainly through the words Jesus is 
reported to have said concerning John, " If I will that 
he tarry till I come." It was on St. John that the 
mantle of the undying saints first fell in the Christian 
period. The place of his slumber was located beside 
that of the Seven Sleepers, at Ephesus. The story 
stands well-framed in the fossil English of the four- 
teenth century traveller, Sir John Maundeville. 

" From Pathmos men gon unto Ephesim, a fair 
citie, and nyghe to the see. And there dyede Seynte 
Johne and was buryed behynde the highe Awtiere, in 
a Toumbe. And there is a fair Chirche. For Christene 

f This legend may, in turn, have helped to create the figure 
of Don Juan, the unsaintly Wanderer whose story is possibly 
related to the mythology we are considering. There are 
interesting suggestions in Le Sage's Diable Boitetix, but the 
figure of Don Juan awaits further study. 



70 THE WANDERING JEW. 

Mere weren wont to holden that place ahveyes. And 
in the Tombe of Seynt John is noughte but Manna, 
that is clept Angeles Mete. For his Body was trans- 
lated in to Paradys. And Turkes holden now alle 
that Place and the citee and the Chirche. And ail 
Asie the lesse is y cleped Turkye. And zee shulle 
undrestonde, that Seynt Johne leet make his Grave 
there in his Lyfe, and leyd him self there inne alle 
quyk. And therefore somme Men seyn, that he dyed 
noughte, but that he restethe there till ten Day of 
Doom. And forsothe there is a gret Marveyle : For 
Men may see there the Erthe of the Tombe apertly 
many tymes steren and meven, as there weren quykke . 
thinges undre." 

The legends concerning Saint John given by St. 
Hippolyte, followed by Eusebius, and Augustine, and 
the ordeals he survived — such as drinking hemlock — 
were suggestive of the potency of the words spoken 
by Christ, however casually, " Tarry till I come." The 
same formula spoken to the Wandering Jew made 
him as indestructible as the disciple " whom Jesus 
loved." Despite the ingenuity of the theory, one can 
hardly doubt that M. Schoebel is right in supposing 
that the Wanderer's early name, Cartaphilus, is formed 
of the Greek Kapra <pi\o<>, signifying ' : the Beloved." 



r 



VII. 

THE MARK OF CAIN. 

In the Oberammergau Passion Play, where scenes 
from the New Testament are preceded by tableaux 
from the Old, Cain killing Abel is made to foreshadow 
Judas betraying Jesus. In some Eastern lands Cain, 
has always been regarded as a Wanderer still living ; 
and to this day the Bedouin recognises his presence in 
the hot Khamseen (Cain-wind), as in the destructive 
hurricane the Picardy peasant exclaims, "C'est le Juif 
errant qui passe!' For a long time, indeed, Cain was 
supposed to be the Wandering Jew, and possibly this 
belief was thought of by Shakspeare (K i7ig- Ricfiard II, 
v. 6) in the words of Bolingbroke to Exton : 

" With Cain go wander through the shade of night, 
And never show thy head by day nor light." 

In Tabari (i. 30), Adam says : 

" We one have had in the midst of us whom death hath not 
yet found. 
No peace for him, no rest for him, treading the blood- 
drenched ground.' 



72 THE WANDERING JEW. 

The so-called ' mark ' of Cain was conceived to be 
a physical sign, and this appears in the legend of the 
Wandering Jew : he was said to have the mark of a 
blood-red cross on his forehead. Xeniola says the 
Inquisition sought to secure him by this sign, but the 
Wanderer concealed it under a black bandage. 

In Rabbinical superstition Cain was not the son 
of Adam but of Sammael, the later demon derived 
from wandering Esau. He (Cain) was banished to the 
Wilderness of Dendain, where his companions are 
Behemoth and Leviathan, who harm him not, though 
they are ever fattened by devouring wicked mortals 
in order that they may supply food for the righteous 
amid the desolations preceding the last day. 

As Cain wandered in a wilderness to the east of 
Eden, in distinction from Seth, who dwelt in a fair 
region of the west, so while St. John was bodily alive 
in his paradise, Judas " went to his own place." As 
Cain was son of Sammael, Satan "entered into" Judas. 

The obvious evil counterpart of John was Judas. 
The two had sat nearest Jesus at the Last Supper, and 
had come in contact with his immortalising flesh — one 
by leaning on his breast, the other by a treacherous kiss. 
A more potent security against death lay in the imme- 
diate way in which Jesus gave to both the bread and 
wine, of which he said, " he that eatcth my flesh and 



. 



THE MARK OF CAIN. 

drinketh my blood shall never die." This was indeed 
given to all of the disciples, and it was — still is — the 
Christian theory that they who partake of the Eucharist 
do not die, but " fall asleep." But there were always 
degrees of quickening effect in this communion. Thus, 
the Seven Sleepers of Tours, who came to that city to 
receive the benediction of St. Martin, received from him 
the Eucharist, and afterwards sank into an unconscious- 
ness from which they never awoke. Their bodies 
remained, with all the external appearance of life in 
their seven graves, still shown in front of their grotto.* 
It is doubtful whether any such person as Judas ever 
lived. The name is the Greek form of Judah, and the 
traitor may be a personification of the kingdom which 
refused to part with the sceptre at the demand of the 
Christian's " Shiloh," before whom alone, in the words 
of Jacob, Judah was to surrender. It may also be that 
this hostility was assigned the form of treachery, be- 
cause of a real Judas who, according to Josephus, 
betrayed a fortress of Jerusalem to the army of Titus. 

* The present grotto was built in 1879. r f ne old one, which 
I saw the year before, had on its ceiling faint frescoes of the 
sun, moon, and stars — recalling the legend of the Seven 
Sleepers of Ephesus who turned their backs on Divus Caesar, 
saying they would worship him alone who made the sun, moon, 
and stars. The angel Gabriel, who led them into Paradise, 
guided them mythologically to Touraine, of old called " the Para- 
dise of France." 



74 THE WANDERING JEW. 

However this may be, even the circumstantial account 
in the New Testament of his death could not save 
Judas from becoming one of the evil wanderers. 
H But this fate of Judas was postponed because of cir- 
cumstances which brought a more important agent of 
Antichrist to the front. While Rome was yet pagan, 
and the Christians suffering there, the Man of Sin con- 
fronting the Son of Man would naturally be visible 
there. The mark of Cain is seen as the mark of the 
Beast, and the forehead of the Beast was Nero. It so 
happened that among the Romans themselves there 
prevailed, for some time after his death, a belief that 
Nero had not really died. The fears of some, the pride 
of others, forbade them to believe that this powerful 
representative of the throne of the Caesars was no more, 
and they looked for his return to give battle to the 
rising kingdom of the Nazarene.* 

But when Rome had been converted to Chris- 
tianity, it became necessary to transfer the role of 
Antichrist to some race which still refused to surrender 
to the new kingdom. 

* This legend has been discussed by Mr. Call, in an essay 
already referred to (p. 30). From references kindly supplied by 
him, I incline to believe it of Eastern origin. It is mentioned 
by Tacitus (Hist. ii. 81), and by the Sibylline Oracles (iv.), at 
nearly the same period. Suetonius, Commodianus, Victorinus, 
and Sulpicias Severus, were familiar with the story that Nero 
was still alive. Neander, Merivale, and Canon Farrar, connect 
the legend with the formation of the theory of an Antichrist. 



THE MARK OF CAIN. 75 

The one unconquerable race — outside Rome, where 
the poor Jews had found their need of an immediate 
revolution too strong for their sufferance and loyalty 
to old traditions — was the Jewish. This people could 
be tortured, driven from land to land under the curse 
of Cain, but not converted to Christianity. Then 
attention returned from Nero to Judas. 

There was an ancient story about Cain, reproduced 
in the Koran, but no doubt following the much earlier 
rabbinical tradition before mentioned, that the Devil 
came to Eve in a dream, when she was pregnant with 
her first son, and persuaded her to call the child by a 

- name which meant " servant of Satan." In the course 
of time a somewhat similar legend grew around the 
phantasmal Judas. It was said that the mother of 
Judas had a dream shortly before his birth, in which it 
was disclosed to her that her son would murder his 
father and sell his God. She and her husband there- 
upon resolved that the child should not live, and at his 
birth he was enclosed in a chest and cast into the sea. 
But the sea cast him on shore, and he was found by a 
king and queen, who adopted him. But they had 
another son, whom Judas slew during a quarrel over a 
game of chess. Thereupon he fled to Judea,and entered 
the service of Pilate as his page. Having committed 
other predestined crimes, including the murder of his 

1 



76 THE WANDERING JEW. 

father, Judas learned from his mother the secret of his 
birth, and of the dream that preceded it. In terror 
and contrition, Judas hears of a prophet who has power 
to forgive sins ; he seeks out Jesus, throws himself at 
his feet ; and Jesus, recognising his predestined be- 
trayer, accepts him as a disciple, and entrusts him with 
the purse, so that Judas's avarice might be cultivated 
and this peculiarly divine scheme should not fail. 
Judas was thus made a retrospective Wanderer. 

In old Greek and Russian pictures, Judas is repre- 
sented on the knees of Satan as his beloved son, 
beside the serpent which appears to be the dove in 
this infernal trinity ; but this Christian fable about 
Judas would seem to show Satan indebted to Jesus 
for his beloved son's training in wickedness. 

That, according to the New Testament, Judas had 
grief and remorse, and expiated his offence by death, 
might naturally have awakened some compassionate 
feeling for him, or sense of his humanity. But in the 
mediaeval faith this grief and remorse were not in him, 
they were Furies sent to torment him. In the old. 
Passion Plays Remorse is a real personage, who 
torments Judas until he invokes Despair, who lays 
before him poison, a dagger, and a rope to choose 
from. Nor was Christian logic equal to the consis- 
tency of Disraeli's contention that, according to the 



THE MARK OF CAIN. 

faith, the betrayal and crucifixion, being essential to 
salvation, were compulsory on Judas and the Jews. 

It will be remembered that the earliest recorded 
Wandering Jew, Cartaphilus, informed the Armenian 
Bishop that he had been Pilate's doorkeeper. By 
this item he is linked with the legendary Judas, who 
is said to have been a page in Pilate's palace. It may 
now be remarked that Pilate also was the subject of a 
somewhat similar legend. There are two classes of 
legends concerning him. In the Abyssinian Church 
Pilate became a martyr and a saint, his calendar day 
being June 25. But in the south of Europe the story 
ran that Pilate became a remorseful Wanderer. He 
committed suicide by drowning himself in a tarn on 
Mount Pilate, near Lucerne. It is a myth, as Professor 
Sayce has shown, evolved from the old name of the 
mountain — " Pileatus," meaning capped (either with 
foliage or cloud *). That little lake has lost all its 

* Introduction to the Science of Language, vol. ii. p. 246. " It 
is remarkable," adds Professor Sayce, " that a French range of 
hills in the neighbourhood of Vienne bears the same name as 
the Swiss mountain, and from the same cause. Vienne, how- 
ever was actually the place to which Pilate was banished ; and 
the accidental coincidence is a striking example of the im- 
possibility of our discovering historic truth in a myth, although 
we may know from other sources that it has accidentally 
attached itself to a real event. Close to Vienne is a ruin called 
the ' Tour de Mauconseil ' from which, it is said, Pilate threw 



7 8 THE WANDERING JEW. 

natural picturesqueness. It is called the " infernal 
lake." Now and then, in the dusk, a man is seen to 
emerge and wash his hands in it as in a basin ; when 
he disappears a hurricane follows. 

The curse of Cain came upon yet another name, — 
Malchus. This servant of Caiaphas, whose ear cut 
off by Peter was healed by Jesus, had no reason to be 
thankful, it would appear by the legend ; this relates 
that he struck Christ with an iron gauntlet, and was 
doomed to walk around a column underground, 
against which he vainly dashes his head, until Judg- 
ment Day, We have already seen (I.) that the 
Wandering Jew, under the name of Joseph, was re- 
ported as undergoing a similar punishment in Jeru- 
salem, in 1641. The story of Malchus seems to blend 
that of Ahasuerus with the Talmudic myth of Cain, 
which is related in Mr. Baring-Gould's Curious Myths 
(ii. p. 116). When Seth sought the Tree of Knowledge 
in order to plant a scion of it in the grave of Adam, 
(see VIII.), he saw its roots in Hell, and Cain trying 
to climb thereby into Paradise. The roots laced 
themselves around Cain and pierced him through and 
through, holding him bound in living agony for ever. 

According to Christian and Jewish revelations Cain 

himself in despair. But the value of the legend may be easily 
estimated when we learn that the tower is really a tete-du-pont 
built by Philippe de Valois." 



THE MARK OF CAIN. 79 

must have discovered that, in his fratricide, he 
had been unsophisticated in the art of punishing an 
offender against one's will. The divine method is more 
ingenious. In the romance of Huon de Bordeaux 
(13th Cent.) by Huon de Villeneuve, the writer reports 
having seen a cask, with serpents and iron prongs 
nside, rolling rapidly along. Cain is shut in it, and 
therein must roll on till the end of the world. This 
rolling cask would appear to be the prison and punish- 
ment of Malchus, adapted to the idea of perpetual 
wandering. Al Sameri was also called Al kharaiti, 
"the turner." Professor D'Ancona (Nnova Antologia, 
Oct., 1880, " La Leggenda dell' Ebreo Errante ") shows 
I that the story of Malchus is Italian. M. Gaston Paris 
ascribes it great antiquity, identifying the name and 
idea with the legend of Marcus the Leper, which is old 
enough to be represented in early Italian proverbs. 
This Marcus, having been cured by Jesus, afterwards 
struck him, and the curse laid upon him was held to 
explain the incurability of leprosy. M. Paris finds 
in this legend the idea of the blow given Jesus. 
If with this are combined the legend of Joseph of 
Arimathea (thrown into prison by the Jews, where his 
life was miraculously preserved), and the words to St. 
John, we have, he thinks, the story of Cartaphilus. 



VIII. 

THE JEW IN THEOLOGY. 

THE fable concerning Judas is one of many which 
indicate the formation of a special Christian doctrine 
concerning the Jewish race. 

After the ruin of their Temple at Jerusalem and'! 
desolation of their city, the Jews made repeated efforts 
— like that led by Bar-Cocheba — to recover their 
independence. As the possibility of recovering their 
city and rebuilding their Temple faded away they 
managed, even in their dispersed condition, to consti- 
tute an imperium in imperio under an officer called 
Resh Gelutha, or " Prince of the Captivity." As was 
natural, they never lost an opportunity of opposing 
the new empire, of which Jesus had been made 
General. In the fourth century they joined the 
Arians. When Julian was called the Apostate he 
gave them leave to rebuild their Temple at Jerusalem, 



• THE JEW IN THEOLOGY. 81 

their hope of doing which was suddenly quenched by 
that Emperor's death. These great events, of which 
the most typical can alone be mentioned here, were 
steadily constituting a definite creed concerning 
the Jewish race, a creed afterwards to be written upon 
all Europe in their blood, and illustrated in the flames 
that consumed them. 

The Christians believed that the Jews, as a race, 
gave themselves up to be the devil's agent for the 
crucifixion of Christ. Even the idea of converting 
them seems hardly to have occurred to any Christian 
before the Reformation — unless the Holy Cross Day 
torture at Rome be called such — and, justly as the 
Jews now resent the efforts of conversionists, the 
existence of a Society of that kind is a result of the 
tardy recognition of their humanity. The scenes of 
the Passion — so long preached, pictured, acted on 
the stage — cast upon the Jews a shadow never relieved, 
and were a perpetual instruction in horror of that 
people. The supernatural character ascribed to them 
by Christians as well as themselves, implied, since 
they had rejected Christ, infranatural wickedness. 
They were to Christendom the chosen people still, 
but now chosen of Satan. 

While the sacred names and superstitions of the 

Jewish people were preserved, a deadly hatred of those 

6 
V 



82 THE WANDERING JEW. 

who had really founded Christianity, and furnished 
[essiah, was carefully fostered. The connection 
of Christianity with Judaism was reduced to a series 
of fairy-tales. Characteristic of these was that about the 
True Cross. Seth receives from the Archangel Michael 
a branch of the Tree of Knowledge to plant in Adam's 
grave, and is told that when it should bear fruit Adam 
would recover. Out of Adam's grave grows the Tree, 
which Solomon hews down for the Temple. The 
workmen cannot so adapt it, and it is used as a bridge 
over a lake. The Queen of Sheba, crossing it, beholds 
a vision of Christ on the Cross, and informs Solomon 
that when a certain person shall be suspended on that 
wood the fall of the Jewish nation would be at hand. 
Solomon in alarm buries the wood, and then springs 
over it the pool of Bethesda. Shortly before the 
crucifixion the tree floated on the water, and ulti- 
mately, as a cross, bore its fruit. The Jews concealed 
the Cross, while pagans built a Temple of Venus on 
the spot where it stood. Helena, mother of Con- 
stantine, having sentenced a Jew to torture and death, 
remits the punishment on condition that he will inform 
her where the Cross is. Out of the three found the 
true one manifests itself by performing cures. Thus 
the Cross itself was a holy immortal Wanderer, with 
the branded Jew ever beside it, seeking to destroy or 
bury it. 

I 



THE JEW IN THEOLOGY. 83 

Race-hatred had much to do with the shaping of 
this theology, which anathematised the race from 
whose primitive superstitions it was chiefly borrowed, 
without discrimination or comprehension. 

The "anti-Semitic" venom crept for ages through the 
veins of Christendom. Fed by millions of pulpits the 
deadly stream percolated through the world, and a 
consistent theory concerning the Jews, was formed, 
not very different from that which at length appeared in 
Swedenborg's pious phantasmagoria. In the history 
of Israel, says Mr. White, Swedenborg " sees nothing 
but selfish Jacob over and over again ; and through- 
out the Arcana Celestia he pursues the Jews with one 
whip of epithets as the basest of mankind."* The 
Jewish race was " chosen " by God not because of 
their excellence, but for their baseness : their lack of 
interior religion made them fit actors in a drama 
where literalness was needed ; their sensuality adapted 
them to be the instrument of incarnation ; and Jesus 
was born of a Jewish mother because he could go 
no lower ! "In that body, whose every faculty was an 
avenue to the Hells, he met as on a battle-field the 
Powers of Evil and Darkness and subdued them." 
A fine offset this to the late Lord Beaconsfield's proud 

* Emanuel Swedenborg ; his Life and Writings. By 
William White. (Simpkin, Marshall and Co., 1868.) P. 197, sq. 

6—2 



84 THE WANDERING JEW. 

reflection that the majority of Christendom hold a 
Jewess to be Queen of Heaven ! It is true that Mary 
was excepted by Christendom from the general curse 
which it saw resting upon the Jewish race ; but her 
exaltation, in the fifth century, was largely due to 
legends of the Jews, which represented her as an 
unchaste woman. Her apotheosis among Christians 
was the other side of her condemnation by the Jews ; 
their vision of her in Hell was replied to in the 
story of her Assumption. The Jews were never bene- 
fited by any of the holy personages transmitted from 
their race for the homage of Christendom. They were 
held to be the official persecutors and crucifiers of 
such as were divinely sent unto them : whatever the 
light seen in their history, the only credit of the Jews 
was to lie under the shadow it cast. 

It was largely through the Miracle Plays that hatred 
of the Jews, diffused by mediaeval homilies, gained the 
shape which proved so fatal to the Jews. On the 
stage the holy drama represented a great struggle 
between the hosts of Heaven and Hell, of which the 
scene was on earth. In that drama the Jewish 
race was not merely the "heavy villain," it was the 
incarnation of all devils. It would appear that for a 
thousand years no Christian regarded any Jew as a 
man at all. In those excesses of cruelty too wild to 



THE JEW IN THEOLOGY. £5 

be now comprehensible — when every European river 
ran red with Jewish blood, when Jews' eyes and teeth 
were plucked out and their bodies burnt as torches 
in saturnalia beside which those of Nero with his 
Christian martyrs were trivial — it is plain that there 
was an epidemic possession wrought by the long 
education of the people in the belief that the Jews, from 
a supernatural, had become an infranatural people. 

They from whose ears the reported denunciations 
of the Jews by Jesus — as "of their Father the Devil," 
as "vipers," "children of Hell" — were never suf- 
fered to die out, and who avenged the crucifixion 
of one man by the crucifixion of a race for cen- 
turies, are condemned for inhumanity. But the 
charge is inexact. They were as charitable as are 
their posterity to those whom they regarded as human 
beings. Their theology had dehumanised the Jews, 
and its progress was traced in Christian inhumanities 
wrought in pious zeal for the Trinity. It was not a 
suspicion admitted into any mind, thus sophisticated, 
that it was a man against whom Judas and the Jews 
had raised their hand. It was against the Eternal 
Majesty. That they saw as the obvious functional 
work of Satan. It was the culminating attack in an 
eternal war against God. Hence those perpetual 
dooms beheld overhanging all concerned in the cruci- 



86 THE WANDERING JEW. 

fixion, which denoted the unpardonable and everlast- 
ing nature of the offence against the eternal Avenger 
of his honour. It is only the God of Theology whose 
vengeance never sleeps nor ends with any generation, 
whose wrath is fresh every day, and his hell eternal. 
Only when man has had his human heart dexterously 
removed, and has become the changeling of some 
vampyre Phantasm he coweringly adores, could he be 
the instrument of the crimes that Christianity has 
committed against humanity. 

Seven times shall Cain be avenged, seventy and 
seven times Lamech, ran the old song ; but Jesus 
said, seventy times seven shalt thou forgive. The 
human Jesus was speedily overlaid and lost beneath 
the myths that gathered around the passive Jesus — 
the babe, the dead body. No holiday was appointed 
for the Sermon on the Mount, nor was there any 
Festival of the Golden Rule. 



IX. 

THE JEW IN FOLK-LORE. 

Iris related in the Legenda Aurea of John Capgrave 
that St. Brendain, on his famous voyage, came to an 
island filled with beautiful birds whose music en- 
tranced the souls of listeners. The birds told the 
saint that they had been angels ; when the rebel 
angels plotted their designs in heaven they had been 
tempted by the Archfiend to join his party ; they did 
not yield, but dallied with the temptation, and when 
the wicked beings were cast into the sea of fire, they 
were transformed into birds. They sang hymns of 
joy, awaiting their release. 

On the other hand, the ill-omened " Seven Whist- 
lers " or " Seven Plovers," of English superstition are 
said to have been Jews who assisted in the crucifixion 
of Jesus. 

These birds are types of the fables that flitted about 



SS THE WANDERING JEW. 

the world in the Middle Ages, each the transformation 
and diminution of their like which had been set free 
by the decay of both European and Jewish mytho- 
logy. Christianity had preserved both with care. 
The Jewish mythology it had disintegrated and re- 
combined for its own supernatural authentication ; to 
the European deities it had given a new lease of life 
by degrading them to devils, affirming their power to 
haunt and harm their former worshippers. If there 
had been any kindly attributes or pleasant tales asso- 
ciated with these deities they were transferred to the 
Christian saints ; if any evils had been told of such, 
they were intensified under the sweeping anathema of 
the new religion. 

Into this miasmatic atmosphere anti-Semitic pre- 
judice and theology were diffused. The same pro- 
cess as that just mentioned concerning "paganism" 
presently overtook the Jews. When all hope of 
changing or exterminating it had passed away the 
theological theory was naturally formed by which all 
the good in the Jewish system was transferred to 
Christianity, and everything repulsive was diaboliscd. 
Unfortunately for the Jews their anathema came later 
than that which had degraded the deities and beliefs 
of pagan Europe ; their sacred forms, rites, supersti- 
tions were the more vivid ; so that the fading phan- 



THE JE W IN FOLK-LORE. 89 

toms of European mythology were able to acquire 
new life by union with the fresher ones imported from 
the East. In this way the demons, gnomes, witches, 
which, from representing the majesty as well as the 
menace of nature, had been doomed to bear responsi- 
bility for all its cruelties, now came to nestle with the 
Jews. These were already the normal scapegoat for 
the fall of man and martyrdoms of Christians ; now 
there entered into them a troop of imaginary horrors 
worse than any known to their most barbarous days. 
Of these a few characteristic examples may be 
selected from the very large number known to every 
student of folk-lore. 

The periodical assemblies of witches believed to 
occur in various wild places were called "Witches' 
Sabbaths/' because Jews were supposed to be the chief 
attendants at them. They there received their wages 
for supporting the kingdom of Antichrist. They 
celebrated a grand mass before the Devil. The blood 
of Christian children was said to be essential to their 
sacrifices. In some regions where, under the ancient 
religion, the effigy of winter had been burnt on one or 
another day of spring, it became the custom to burn it on 
Good Friday and under the name of Judas. The cere- 
mony of scourging and burning Judas still takes place 
annually in the London Docks. In Spain it is con- 



90 THE WANDERING JEW, 

sidered necessary to spit after pronouncing the word 
"Jew;" arid from that country the paganised effigies 
of that people have spread through distant regions 
of the world. In some regions (as Oldenberg) the 
birthday of poor everlasting Judas is said to be 
February 14, in others (as Franconia) it is fixed as 
April 1, and these days are unlucky. The stigma 
of Iscariot passed upon certain trees, as the aspen, 
which was said to tremble perpetually because he 
hung upon it; and the Judas-tree, with its blood- 
drop blossoms. In the Bergstrasse, or high road 
between Darmstadt and Heidelberg, the peasantry 
still believe that every Jew possesses the " evil eye," 
and that if a sick person wishes to die swiftly he must 
get a Rabbi to pray for his convalescence. In sundry 
places Jews are believed able to foretell the weather 
by means of dividing a loaf of bread, putting the 
parts together again, and shoving it with a mysterious 
word into an oven. They are also believed to spread 
diseases by spells written in Hebrew on bits of paper, 
and to deal in such charms. In some regions noises 
heard in mines were indifferently attributed to 
kobolds, or to the ghosts of Jews believed to have 
been made to work in them as slaves by the Romans. 
In East Friesland it is considered very unlucky to meet 
a Jew first in the morning ; if a Jew is the first to enter 



THE JEW IN FOLK-LORE. 91 

one's house on Monday, or even to look into the win- 
dow, it renders the whole week unlucky to the house, 
and was once an offence that might be prosecuted* 
Other Jews impaled in the ever-repeated Christian 
legend took on, in the popular imagination, the dia- 
bolical forms into which the pagan deities had been de- 
graded by missionaries. In storms Herod was said still 
to hunt the Innocents. The Perigord peasant names 
the fierce thunderstorm " la chasse Herode." This 
was probably an ingenious development of the Herr- 
Rote, or Haar-Rote, the red-haired demon-huntsman. 
Associated with him was Herodias. Grimm says that 
the Italians sometimes identify their misshapen fairy 
Befana — a terror to children, who has sprung out of 
Epiphania — as Herod's daughter (Salome); so that both 
mother and daughter were made into evil wanderers, f 
Herodias, who prompted her daughter to demand the 
head of John the Baptist, was associated with Diana 
and Holda in the nocturnal expeditions of demons 
and witches. She was at the head of an aerial host 
of such. Only from midnight to cockcrow can she 
rest, and then sits upon oaks and hazel-trees. She 
was said to have an unrequited passion for John, 

* Der deutsche Volksabe?'glaube der Gegenwart. Dr. Adolf 
Wuttke. Berlin, 1869. 

f Deutsche Mythologie, xiii. 5, 6. (Tr. by J. S. Stallybrass. 
Sonnenschein and Allen, 1880.) 



92 THE WANDERING JEW. 

and when his head was brought in on a charger would 
have kissed it, but it recoiled and blew upon her, and 
she was whirled into the air, where she wanders. In 
Lower Saxony whirlwinds are accounted for by the 
dancing of Herodias, as elsewhere to that of the devil. 
Herod and Herodias are said by Josephus to have 
been banished to Lyons, and eventually to have died 
in Spain ; perhaps this may account for the special 
prominence she holds in the folk-lore of Spanish 
America. In Mexico the puppet Herodias dances in 
a kind of Punch and Judy show in Holy Week, to the 
music of rattles made of " Judas bones." In Eugene 
Sue's Wandering Jew Herodias appears in Arctic 
America. M. Gaston Paris cites several Italian pro- 
verbs in which Judas and Malchus are united (as in 
Sicily, In Juda-Marai) to characterise an ugly or un- 
pleasant countenance. It has been thought (though 
I have not investigated the matter) that our puppet- 
show, Punch and Judy, is a distant outcome of an old 
play, Pontius cum Judceis, in which the Jews were 
severely handled by the pro-consul. 



X. 

THE WEIRD OF THE WANDERER. 

THERE is one class of survivals from the fatalistic 
ideas of all so-called paganisms which have always 
been very strong in the popular mind of Europe. It 
was a creed in which all ancient faiths converged, 
that an irresistible power was lodged in any officially- 
uttered curse. The word once solemnly spoken, be- 
came the weird, the fatum, and not even the tongue 
that spake could revoke it. Oftenest the dooms that 
represented this belief in the Middle Ages were 
supposed to come from Heaven in response to some 
defiant invocation, or blasphemous challenge like that 
of the Flying Dutchman. It is a notable fact for the 
antiquarian that in the year 1881 the courts of Eng- 
land should be trying a case involving the question of 
whether a lecturer took out his watch and gave the 
deity, whose existence he denied, five minutes to strike 



94 THE WANDERING JEW. 

him dead. That is an old myth normally fixed on 
misbelievers ; and it is probable that the motives for 
selecting that particular slander for judicial denial, if 
traced out, would be found connected with the ancient 
superstition that such words must have the eternal 
effect of real natural forces. From the ancient 
patriarchalism, which has so many political and social 
survivals in Europe, came the idea that a father's 
curse (or blessing) carried with it the fatal forces of 
the universe. More universal still was the potency 
supposed to attend the word of a priest, however 
casual. This notion is still met with in the many 
stories of persons said to have died soon after ridicul- 
ing the proceedings of " revivalists." 

Grasse has collected some examples of such super- 
stitions in Europe, beginning so far back as the legend 
of Domitilla, the grand-daughter of Domitian. In 
her room, after she had become a Christian, her hus- 
band introduced dancers to win her back to the world 
arid to himself: he began showing them how to dance, 
but could not stop ; and after dancing two days and 
nights, died. Such " dances " are now familiar in 
folk-lore, and are associated with some of the stone 
circles of England. In Kolbeck, near Halbustadt, 
there is a legend that, in the year 1012, a peasant 
named Albrecht and fifteen others who danced before 



THE WEIRD OF THE WANDERER. 95 

the Church on Christmas while Mass was going on, 
were ordered by the priest to dance for a year. The 
Bishop of Cologne had to come and release these 
dancers, who had worn a deep hole in the ground. In 
the same vein is the story of " the merry smith of 
Jiiterbogk," a small survival of Sisyphus. A remark- 
able story of this kind is that of Freiburg (A. M tiller, 
Theatr. Freiburg Chron. y 1633). An irritable father, 
Lorent Richter, ordered his son of fourteen years to 
do something : the boy hesitated, standing in the 
middle of the room. " Cursed boy," cried the father, 
" may you stand there for ever !" The boy remained 
standing there, propped by supports, and after many 
years the priests, by many prayers, could only secure 
the small commutation of a removal to a corner where 
he would not be so much in the way of the household. 
" At last the kind God a little altered the punishment 
by allowing him to sit during the last six months of 
the year, and also to lie in a bed placed near him. 
When asked what he did, he answered that he was 
punished by God the Lord for his sins ; that he left 
all to His will ; and trusted in the merits of Christ to 
obtain final happiness." After seven years — a number 
associated with many famous sleepers — the boy " was 
relieved, nth Sept., 1552." His footprints were 
pointed out on the floor for a hundred years. The 



; 



96 THE WANDERING JEW. 

father had wished to obliterate this memento of his 
anger, but the authorities decided that the footprints 
should remain as a warning to wrathful parents and 
disobedient children. 

The great majority of "dooms" known to Northern 
paganism have exchanged connotations with the legend 
of the Wandering Jew. The sentence pronounced 
upon such royal huntsmen or robber-knights as 
Dyterbjernat of Danzig, Diedrick of Bern, Duke Abel 
the fratricide (Schleswig), and others, is usually of this 
character. In the Netherlands it is the story of a son 
who refused to listen to his father's Christian advice, 
but called his dogs into the wood : the father cried, 
" Hunt, then, for ever !" and so he hunts on, and his 
voice, mingled with the baying of dogs, is heard in 
the woods about the Castle of Wynedal. In Thuringia, 
it is Hakelnberg who would not listen to the priest, 
who bade him " hunt until the last day." These for- 
mulas of the curse are related to that of the Jew- 
legend : the primitive pagan legend is different, e.g. 
the hunt long known as the Horlething, on the banks 
of the Wye. It was said King Herla went to the 
marriage feast of a dwarf : when he returned to his 
palace he found that he had been in the mountain 
with the dwarf two hundred years, and was under a 
doom to ride on until the day of judgment. The 



THE WEIRD OF THE WANDERER. 97 

visit to the dwarf's festival simply meant a relapse 
into paganism. 

That the myth of the Wandering Jew was interwoven 
with that of the Demon Huntsman of Germany (which 
is called Aaskarreya in Norway), there can be no 
doubt. " Perhaps," says Karl Blind, " one of the 
clearest proofs of the phantom figure of the Wander- 
ing Jew having been grafted upon that of the great 
Wanderer and World-hunter, Wodan, is to be found 
in a tale of the Hartz Mountains. There it is said 
that the Wild Huntsman careers c over the seven 
mountain -towns every seven years.' The reason 
given for his ceaseless wanderings is, that ' he would 
not allow our Lord Jesus Christ to quench his thirst 
at a river, nor at a water-trough for cattle, from both 
of which he drove him away, telling him that he ought 
to drink from a horse-pond.' For this reason the 
Wild Huntsman must wander about for ever, and feed 
upon horseflesh. And whoever calls out after him, 
when his ghostly chase comes by, will see the Wild 
Huntsman turn round, and be compelled by him to 
eat horseflesh too. No allusion whatever is made in 
this tale to a Jew, though the name of Christ is pressed 
into it in a way very like the Ahasuerus legend. We 
seem to get here a mythic rendering of the struggle 
between the old Germanic faith and the Christian 

7 



98 THE WANDERING JEW. 

religion. The ' horse-pond ' and the ' horseflesh ' 
are, to all appearances, references to our horse-worship- 
ping, horse-sacrificing, horseflesh-eating forefathers, 
who came to Britain under the leadership of Hengist 
and Horsa. To call out after the eternal Huntsman 
entails the danger of being forced by him to eat 
horseflesh — that is, to return to the old creed. The 
Holy Supper of the Teutonic tribes consisted of horse- 
flesh and mead. When Christianity came in, the 
eating of horseflesh was abolished as a heathen cus- 
tom. But at German witches' banquets — in other 
w T ords, at secret festive ceremonies in which the pagan 
traditions were still kept up — there continued for a 
long time a custom of drinking from horse-shoes."* 

We have in this sentence last quoted from Mr. Blind's 
able article a suggestion of the probable origin of the 
horse-shoe as a charm against witches. To the pagan 
Teuton it was as sacred an emblem as to the Christian 
his cross. While the Christians still believed in the 
power of the Wild Huntsman and his train to work 
them mischief, they might naturally show this symbol 
of pagan orthodoxy over their doors to induce the 
witches to pass on and visit their wrath on the openly 
disloyal. 

* The Gentleman 's Magazine, July, 1880. Wodan, the Wild 
Hunt swan, and the Wandering Jew. 



THE WEIRD OF THE WANDERER. 99 

This article in The Gentleman's Magazine contains 
an original speculation and theory concerning two 
remarkable problems connected with our legend. 
How is it that the name Cartaphilus was replaced by 
Ahasuerus ? How did the " doorkeeper " of the thir- 
teenth century become the " shoemaker " of the six- 
teenth century legend ? Mr. Blind, with a creditable 
caution, suggests that the name may have been a 
modification of As-Vidar. This god (As) Vidar was 
in the Scandinavian mythology the symbol of ever- 
lasting force : he was the deity who was alone to sur- 
vive the universal destruction of Ragnarok, " Twilight 
of the Gods." In the Prose Edda it is written : " The 
Wolf (Fenris) swallows Odin, but at that instant 
Vidar advances, and setting his foot on the monster's 
lower jaw, seizes the other with his hand, and thus 
tears and rends him till he dies. Vidar is able to do 
this because he wears shoes for which stuff has been 
gathering in all ages, namely, the shreds of leather 
which are cut off to form the toes and heels of shoes ; 
and it is on this account that those who would render 
a service to the ^Esir (gods) should take care to 
throw such shreds away." It is said there are (or 
were) preserved in the Government Library at Berne 
traditional relics left by the Wandering Jew, his staff 
and pair of shoes. These shoes are said, by an early 

7—2 



ioo THE WANDERING JEW. 

local authority, to be " uncommonly large and made 
of a hundred snips — a shoemaker's master-piece, be- 
cause patched together v/ith the utmost labour, dili- 
gence, and cleverness out of so many shreds of leather.'' 
A similar pair of shoes are said to have also been left 
by Ahasuerus at Ulm. 

It may be remarked that the name given to the 
Wandering Jew in the Praxis Alchymine of Libavius, 
viz., Buttadseus, may possibly refer to the boot (A. S. 
butte) of the Wanderer, and it may have been that 
dens was added. Whether it meant the " booted god," 
or the man who struck God with a boot, or bouter diai 
(to push God), must remain doubtful. It is a striking 
coincidence, if no more, that, in Talmudic legend, 
Enoch also was a shoemaker, who with every stitch 
exclaimed, " The Lord and His Majesty be praised !" 

The names of the Wandering Jew are characteristic- 
ally various, not to say vagarious ; they are also 
sometimes puzzling. Cartaphilus is pretty certainly 
tedpra (piXos, in allusion to the " beloved " disciple ; 
Ahasuerus is perhaps the Hebrew form of Xerxes, 
though there is nothing in the history of that king to 
connect him with the Wandering Jew. Several give 
his name as Gregorius, through a mistake, as M. Paris 
has pointed out, as to the meaning of Botoreius, who 
wrote that Jesus stopped "ante tabernam grcgorii 



THE WEIRD OF THE WANDERER. 101 

illius ;" the Turkish Spy names him I\Iichob Ader. 
One name popularly ascribed to him in Brussels 
is " Isaac Laquedem." Concerning this Grasse has 
a note in which he says, " I asked for an explana- 
tion of the word, and my friend Dr. Bottcher, the 
celebrated expert in Hebrew, gave me the follow- 
ing answer, ' If the name Laquedem is written and 
pronounced in French (Walloon) " Lakedem," and is 
derived from the Hebrew, it can scarcely be any- 
thing else but la-kedem, i.e., " the former world " 
[belonging to an anterior world], in which case we 
must say the use of the prefix "la" is without a parallel 
in names of later Jews, and therefore the " la," the 
French article, may be considered due to a half- 
learned inventor of names {vide Lacroix, Lamarque, 
La Loresh. Wolf, Bibl. Hebr. iv. 812).' " 

As for the name " Joseph," given by the Armenian 
Bishop as the baptismal name of Cartaphilus, there is 
evidence in the old Chronicle itself that it was derived 
by association with Joseph of Arimathea, who is said 
to have wandered through a large part of the world 
and to have come to Britain in the year 66, where his 
blossoming staff fixed the site of Glastonbury Abbey. 

It is an indication of the steadiness with which 
every being, however exalted originally, was degraded 
by coming under the supposed preternatural fate of 



102 THE WANDERING JEW. 

the Jewish race, that this Joseph of Arimathea, by 
giving a baptismal name to Cartaphilus, gave the 
English populace their epithet for the beggars or 
impostors who were supposed to be the Wandering 
Jew. He was called " Poor Joe !" Of him, as repre- 
senting the dregs of the myth, more must be said 
hereafter. Another example of this degradation is 
shown in the fact that in various parts of Europe the 
storm-demon is called Maccabee. The process by which 
this was brought about has not, to my knowledge, 
been traced, but the following facts seem to bear on it. 
In 2 Maccabaeus, v. 2-4, it is written — " Then it hap- 
pened that through all the city, for the space almost 
of forty days, there were seen horsemen running in the 
air, in cloth of gold, and armed with lances like a band 
of soldiers . . . Wherefore every man prayed that that 
apparition might turn to good." These apparitions, 
resembling those said by Josephus to have reappeared 
at the siege of Jerusalem, were adopted as good 
Christian omens. Judas Maccabseus also records his 
vision of the prophet Jeremiah giving him a golden 
sword to defend the holy people. It is probable that 
this was the germ of the superstition which proved so 
fatal to the Christians at the siege of Constantinople 
(1453). After the capture of the city, men, women 
and children rushed into the Church of St. Sophia for 



THE WEIRD OF THE WANDERER. 103 

protection, because of a prophecy that " one day the 
Turks would enter Constantinople and pursue the 
Romans as far as the column of Constantine in the 
square before St. Sophia ; but that this would be the 
term of their calamities; that an angel would descend 
from heaven with a sword in his hand, and would 
deliver the empire, with that celestial weapon, to a 
poor man seated at the foot of the column. ' Take 
this sword,' would he say, ' and avenge the people of 
the Lord.' At these animating words the Turks 
would instantly fly . . . While they expected the 
descent of the tardy angel, the doors were broken 
with axes ; and, as the Turks encountered no resist- 
ance, their bloodless hands were employed in selecting 
and securing the multitude of their prisoners" (Gibbon, 
ch. lxviii.). 

It looks as if the association of the wild aerial chase 
with Maccabee, in France and other southern regions, 
might have resulted from the diffusion of the supersti- 
tion which drew such a thunderbolt upon the Chris- 
tians of Constantinople, and its gradual subjection to 
the demonising doom which rested upon even the 
brightest figures of Jewish history not wearing the 
Christian uniform. 



XL 

" THE VERY DEVIL INCARNATION." 

" Enter Launcelot Gobbo !" So begins Scene ii. of 
Act II. in the Merchant of Venice. Or as the original 
stage-direction ran, " Enter the Clown !" His very 
name suggests the glutton and knave, yet it seems to 
be from him some Shakspearian guides derive their 
chief light on the great poet's picture of Shylock ! 

Gobbo does indeed cast light upon the Jew, but it 
comes from the mob which he represented. To say 
" my master is a very Jew," and " the Jew . . is the 
devil himself," are equivalent phrases in the capacious 
mouth of Gobbo. He speaks for his gaping herd, and 
their breed is not unknown. Judenhetze is able to 
turn out such men in the latter days of the nineteenth 
century. 

Bochart,in his Hierozoicon (seventeenth century), says 
there was a Sea-monster called " The Old Jew ;" with 
the white-bearded face of a man he had the hairy body 



" THE VERY DEVIL INCARNATION:' 105 

of an ox, otherwise calf-shaped. This monster always 
appeared the night before Saturday on the surface of 
the sea, and one could see him until sunset next day 
leaping and diving like a frog, and following ships. 
This monster, no doubt a variety of Al-Sameri, 
elsewhere considered, is a fair type of what every Jew 
was, for many centuries, in the eyes of the multitudi- 
nous Gobbites. What stood for religion in them was 
the vulgar ribaldry of the Miracle Plays, under which 
those holy farces presently perished. In them Judas, 
still the buffeted Wanderer, was the one figure-head 
of the Jewish race, w T ith the devil for his familiar. 

In ancient Persian pictures Ahriman and his host 
' have flame for hair. After the introduction of Chris- 
tianity the deities of Europe, which it degraded to 
devils, were described and painted with fiery hair and 
beard ; as it stands in the German saying, " Roter 
Part, Teufelsart." In the early Miracle Plays Judas 
was made up with red hair and beard to show the 
fiery abode to which he belonged. This feature sur- 
vived also in the "yellow bonnet" which the Jews 
were compelled to wear, which replaced the scarlet or 
red bonnets which the " Scarlet Woman " found too 
like her own.* The significant costume, and the ideas 

* See Knight's Shakspeare, notes to the Merchant of Venice. — 
Blanco White, in his Letters from Spain (1806), speaking of 
the Passion- Week shows, says : " The dress of the Apostle John 



106 THE WANDERING JEW. 

it expressed, passed to the conventional stage-Jew. 
Barabas, in Marlowe's Jew of Malta, and after him, 
Shylock, were represented with the " orange-tawny 
bonnet," and fiery red hair and beard. 

In keeping with this the crimes popularly ascribed 
to the Jews, for which they suffered so terribly, were 
not human crimes. They were utterly without motive 
— such as no man, however vile, could have com- 
mitted. For one example out of many, the Jews of 
Lincoln were charged with having fattened a Christian 
child of eight years on white bread and milk, then 
scourged him, crowned him with thorns, crucified him, 
giving him gall. For that impossible crime 112 
eminent Jews were tortured and slain. It wa 
rumoured that the earth would not receive the body 
of that child, yet for years Christian pilgrims visited 
its grave. 

is green, that of Judas t yellow ; and so intimately associated 
is this circumstance with the idea of the traitor, that it has 
brought that colour into universal discredit .... The Inquisi- 
tion has adopted it for the Sambeu'ito, a coat of infamy, which 
persons convicted of heresy are compelled to wear. The red 
hair of Judas, like Peter's baldness, seems to be agreed upon by 
all the painters and sculptors of Europe. Judas' hair is a usual 
name in Spain ; and a similar appellation, it should seem, was 
used in England in Shakspeare's time. " His hair" says Rosa- 
lind, "is of the dissembling colour." To which Celia answers 
" Something browner than Judas'.-." 



u THE VERY DEVIL INCARNATION? 107 

Such wild, popular notions were faithfully reflected 
in Marlowe's Jew oj Malta. " Barabas," says Charles 
Lamb, " is a mere monster, brought in with a large 
painted nose, to please the rabble. He kills in sport 
— poisons whole nunneries — invents infernal machines. 
He is just such an exhibition as, a century or two 
earlier, might have been played before the Londoners, 
by the Royal command, when a general pillage and 
massacre of the Hebrews had been previously resolved 
on in the cabinet." 

It will be now apparent to those who have followed 
the travels of this Jew-myth that it had carried about 
in its endless wanderings the belief in which it 
originated, and of whose development it was a type — 
the infranatural, finally the infernal, nature of the 
Jewish race. It inevitably blended with all the super- 
stitions about uncanny phantoms, bringing the most 
evil and ominous shapes haunting the popular 
imagination in every locality into connection with the 
detested race. Demons from the air, goblins from 
their caves, birds of ill-omen, fearful gales, betokening 
the proximity of the Wandering Phantom, brought 
air ever-accumulating mass of fear, suspicion and 
hatred upon the race of which its supposed doom was 
a too faithful emblem. This vast cesspool of vulgar 
superstition mirrored the dogmas of a theology ever 



jo8 THE WANDERING JEW. 

developing downward. It was not permitted the 
masses to look upon the alleged offences of Judas cr 
Ahasuerus in comparison with offences familiar to 
them. As we have seen, the offence thought of was 
the wrong and insult done to a God ; it was an intensi- 
fication of the same feeling that regarded theft from 
a church as worse than theft from the poorest widow, 
or a slight untruth under oath as more wicked than 
the most malicious lie not sworn to. Out of such a 
principle of unreason naturally came the doom of a 
race through many centuries to realise every ingenuity 
of torture fabled in the Greek Hades, with Gehenna 
added. Every revolving century was their Ixion- 
wheel, and every stream their Phlegethon. 



XII. 

THE WANDERING RACE. 

PROFESSOR Child, of Harvard University, has re- 
marked that, " in the second form of the legend, the 
punishment of perpetual existence, which gives rise to 
the old names, JudcBiis 11011 mortalis, Ezuiger Jude, is 
aggravated by a condemnation to perpetual change of 
place, which is indicated by a corresponding name, 
Wandering J eiv,Juif Errant, etc." * In this change a 
great deal of history is represented. The Jewish race 
under persecution steadily became a wandering race. 
They were compelled to " move on " by the remorse- 
less police of Christendom. One after another the 
laws of nations detached them from the soil, from the 
trade-guilds, from civic position, and they became a 
nation without a country. 

This process went on for a long time before it was 
represented in any myth or legend. Mohammed 
* English and Scottish Ballads, viii. 78. 



THE WANDERING JEW. 



said, " The Jews are the People of the Book." Joshua 
ben Siras ben Eliezer, a priest in Jerusalem two hun- 
dred years before the burning of the Second Temple 
(quoted by Heine), wrote, " All this is the Book of 
the Covenant made with the Most High God, namely, 
the Law which Moses commanded as a precious trea- 
sure to the House of Jacob. Wisdom floweth there- 
from as the water of Pison when it is great, and as the 
water of Tigris when it overfloweth its banks in 
spring. Instruction floweth from it as the Euphrates 
when it is great, and as Jordan in the harvest. Cor- 
rection cometh forth from it as the light, and as the 
water of the Nile in autumn. There is none that 
hath made an end of learning it, there is none that 
will ever find out all its mystery, for its wisdom is 
richer than any sea and its word deeper than any 
abyss." 

So spake the genius of Israel, and, so speaking, 
itself uttered its first doom. A people to whom a 
book had become their Fatherland, which had come 
to see in it their Jordan, their Tigris, their Nile, had 
already given up their hold upon the territories of 
this world and become a wandering colony of J alive, 
governed by a code unrelated to the vices or the aims 
of other races. This abstract country, whose geo- 
graphy was books and texts, was fenced around and 



Ci 



THE WANDERING RACE. in 

fortified as strongly as the territory of any nation. 
Its fortresses were ceremonies, customs, national 
traditions, and a perfect patience derived from faith 
in the God of their fathers. The Cain whom they 
abhorred was not more effectually " cursed from the 
earth," prohibited from tillage of the ground than this 
race which had taken Jahve for their portion and his 
law for their habitation. 

In such a system there could be no compromise. 
And as a matter of fact there never was any compro- 
mise with the enemies of their faith. These people, 
who have shown ingenuity and cleverness of every 
kind, have never developed any sort of Jesuitism. I 
*was astonished lately at learning of an instance in 
which a Jew outwitted his persecutors in true Chris- 
tian style, for I never heard of another. This Jew 
was a pedlar, and he was wandering in France in the 
neighbourhood of one of those districts where the 
Virgin Mary is still continually opening new water- 
cure establishments. This Jew, having heard the latest 
miracle which had evoked a new fountain, smiled, and 
even made light of it. Thereon the innkeepers excited 
a mob, and they resolved to hang the miscreant— that 
is, the unbeliever— faggots being old-fashioned. They 
seized the poor pedlar and bore him off pallid with 
terror. As they passed near the new fountain, the 



'« THE WANDERING JEW. 

Jew begged permission to moisten his lips thereat • 
this was conceded, but no sooner had the water 
touched his lips than he leaped about with joy and 
declared that the fountain had healed a severe rheu 
matism which he had suffered from for many years 
" A rmracle ! a miracle !" shouted the crowd ; the 
■suddenly became a hero, and was carried before the 
priest, who appointed the next day to baptise him 
before all the people and make a grand demonstra- 
tion. The Jew, however, disappeared during the 
night. 

This story, which I found in a recent number of 
the Jewish World, is a modern appendage to the old 
legend mentioned by Mr. Baring-Gould, that the' 
gips.es were said to wander under a doom pronounced 
on them because they refused to shelter the Virgin 
and child in the flight into Egypt. But this witty 
pedlar is not a fair representative of the race 
"Sufferance is the badge of all our tribe" said 
Shylock. Though Shylock- has been regarded by 
many as a type of avarice and extortion, yet even he 
cannot be tempted by money when his struggle with 
the Merchant becomes a religious issue. Shakspeare 
rightly shows Shylock unyielding; many times the 
money due to him cannot bribe him from the blow he 
feels empowered to strike for his despised Israel. And 



THE WANDERING RACE. 113 

when, in the beginning of this century, Nathan Roth- 
schild started as the great banker of London, no 
temptations could induce him, shrewd as he was, to 
lend money or enter into any contracts for the benefit 
of Spain or its colonies. The Israelite was never lost 
in the banker, and showed his supremacy when it 
came to a race which had banished his own from the 
Iberian Peninsula ; though at the same time his 
charities and those of his house have included Chris- 
tians hardly less than Jews. The same unyielding 
religious spirit was shown when thirty-three years ago 
Baron Lionel de Rothschild was elected Member ot 
Parliament for the City of London. The honour 
>of being the first Jew in that body could not induce 
him to swear his allegiance " on the true faith of a 
Christian," and on the New Testament. He remained 
out of his seat for eleven years — and with him David 
Salomons, who paid the penalty of ^"500 for voting in 
the House without being duly sworn — when Parlia- 
ment yielded to men who did not yield, and the oath 
was changed for Jews. 

It has sometimes excited wonder why this wanderer 
among the races, uncompromising amid the hatred of 
ages, was not exterminated. It must often have 
appeared to them that, like the bush in their own 
legend, they were burnt without being consumed, 



ii 4 THE WANDERING JEW. 1 

because their God was in the bush. But no miracu- 
lous force need be sought in the case, nor any excep- 
tional tenacity of life in them as a race; their circum- 
stances developed in them special faculties adapted to 
the commerce and civilisation of the world. Heine 
said truly "the Jews were legally condemned to 
become rich." The populace generally believed that 
Jewish wealth was got from the Devil, their wages for 
maintaining the kingdom of Antichrist in the world. 
The Jewish banker, Samuel Bernard, who died in 
1789, leaving a large property, had a black cock which 
was popularly believed to be connected >with his 
wealth. The suspicion was confirmed when the bird 
died a day or two before its master. ^ 

As a matter of fact the Jews were driven to deal in 
money and jewellery — a word supposed by some to be 
derived from " Jew " — by the general exclusion of 
them from the possession of land and from the acqui- 
sition of property by handicraft Gold and silver 
alone were left for their enterprise. 

And there were good causes why they ama- 
wealth. The first was that they did not spend it on 
Gentile baubles. They cared not for the pomps and 
luxuries of a world to which they did not be! 
Why then did they want to accumulate it ? Why 
were they so thrifty and unwearied in their pursuit of 



•• 



THE WANDERING RACE. 115 

gold ? To ascribe this to avarice is to accept a popular 
fallacy refuted by the history of that people, who are 
even lavish in their charities and in their support of 
public enterprises (as in England and America) where 
they are free and equal citizens. In their earlier days 
the Jews' hope of recovering their country and re- 
establishing their Theocracy under the Messiah was a 
passionate aspiration, it was as sincere as any 
patriotism ; every Jew held his wealth and his life as a 
trust for that end. All their wealth they hoped one 
day to lay at the Messiah's feet. So it began, and 
then a new factor re-enforced it. The wealth of the 
.Jews became the main means of their survival as a 
people. Kings and Popes protected them for the 
money they could get out of them. But for this they 
would certainly have been exterminated. From them 
chiefly was extorted the money for Henry the Second's 
Crusade in their own Holy Land. Mainly by their 
labour and wealth Westminster Abbey was built. 
By such protective extortions there was established a 
certain force of natural selection and evolution, based 
on their wealth, which gradually made them the 
financial princes of Europe and bankers of the 
world. 

Whatever German bigots may say, the financial 
supremacy of the Jews has been well and wisely exer- 

8—2 

9 



n6 THE WANDERING JEW. 

cised. The nations not included under it have fared 
according to their folly. When Queen Isabella of old 
wished to protect the Jews because of such advantages, 
she was confronted by the fanatic who said, " Judas sold 
his Lord for thirty pieces of silver ; will you sell Him for 
thirty millions ?" So the Jews suffered in Spain ; but 
what did Spain suffer ? What did Holland and 
England gain by the Spanish Jews, first tolerated, 
then welcomed in their cities ? This Germany will be 
able to answer if the jealous bigots there let loose on 
the Jews should succeed in driving them out of the 
country. 

" Thou, O Daniel, shut up the words and seal the 
book, even to the time of the end : many shall run to 
and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." So early 
did the compulsory tendencies of the Jews reveal 
themselves. Their alienation among other peoples 
made them close up in their ceremonial law as in a 
shell ; their book was sealed amid inferior ' revelation c ' 
swarming around them, and themselves sealed in it : 
but, meanwhile, detached from the soil and the guilds 
of every country, forced to be exchangers, pedlars, 
they must travel to and fro, and their knowledge was 
increased. They became so well acquainted with the 
lore of different lands, with the medical and other 
knowledge of various countries, that they were sup- 



THE WANDERING RACE. 117 

posed to possess occult powers. Occasionally, this 
reputation might be of service to them, as in the in- 
stance where Queen Elizabeth employed a Jewish 
physician for his supposed occult knowledge ; but 
more often it harmed them, as in the evil fate that 
overtook that same physician, whom jealous rivals 
accused of an attempt to poison the Queen. For 
many centuries they presented the most remarkable 
instance of a people who had largely outgrown their 
primitive superstitions, and acquired a religious and 
intellectual enlightenment beyond the rest of the world, 
who yet kept all this culture within the hard walls of 
their barbaric stronghold, their ancient forms and 
formulas, from which they did not dare to venture. 



XIII. 

THE POUND OF FLESH. 

PASSING out of Rome by the Via Appia, one comes 
to many places of antiquarian interest, but presently 
arrives at a spot whose significance increases with 
time. This is the church called Domine quo vadis. , 
There, says the legend, St. Peter, once more flying 
from danger, met Jesus, and said, " Lord, whither 
goest thou ?' Jesus answered, ' Venio Romam iterum 
crucifigi! Whereupon Peter returned, and met his 
fate — that hard one of a mythical martyrdom, fol- 
lowed by resurrection as a Pontifical Jupiter, wielding 
his keys as thunderbolts. A fac-simile of the holy 
footprints of Jesus is here in the church, the originals, 
sunk in marble, being preserved in Saint Sebastian's 
Church. 

Goethe had perhaps seen the worshippers around 
these footprints (near by the Jewish catacomb with 
its seven-branch candlestick), when there arose in him 



THE PO UND OF FLESH. 1 1 9 

the idea of a poem which, alas, never got farther than 
the outline given in a further chapter. Writing from 
Terni, October 27th, 1786, he says : "Yesterday I felt 
inspired to undertake a work which at present would 
be ill-timed. Approaching nearer and nearer to the 
centre of Romanism, surrounded by Roman Catholics, 
boxed up with a priest in a sedan, and striving 
anxiously to observe and to study without prejudice 
true nature and noble art, I have arrived at a vivid 
conviction that all traces of original Christianity are 
extinct here. Indeed, while I tried to bring it before 
my mind in its purity, as we see it recorded in the 
Acts of the Apostles, I could not help shuddering to 
think of the shapeless, not to say grotesque, mass of 
heathenism which heavily overlies its benign begin- 
nings. Accordingly, the 'Wandering Jew' again 
occurred to me as having been a witness of all this 
wonderful development and envelopment, and as 
having lived to experience so strange a state of things, 
that Christ himself, when he shall come a second time 
to gather his harvest, will be in danger of being 
crucified a second time. The legend Venio iteruwt 
cracifigi was to serve me as the material of this 
catastrophe."* 

Perhaps Goethe also witnessed " Holy-Cross Day " 

* Morrison's translation (Bohn). 



120 THE WANDERING JEW. 

in Rome, when the Jews were " compelled to come in " 
and hear the annual sermon — "haled," as one said, 
" as it were by the head and hair, and against their 
obstinate hearts, to partake of the heavenly grace." 
Had the two visionary Wanderers — Jesus and Aha- 
suerus — once more encountered each other in sight 
of the crosses, they could only have hung side by side ; 
he who gave the blow in Jerusalem, now conceivably 
the one person in Rome able to recognise the freshly- 
crucified from a cross of his own — the cross of his 
race. From another poet have come the words which 
typical Ahasuerus might, after the experience of so 
many centuries, speak to the fellow-sufferer he once 
had insulted : 

" Thou art the Judge. We are bruised thus, 
But, the judgment over, join sides with us ! 
Thine too is the cause ! and not more Thine 
Than ours is the work of these dogs and swine, 
Whose life laughs through and spits at their creed, 
Who maintain Thee in word, and defy Thee in deed ! 

" We withstood Christ then ? be mindful how, 
At least we withstand Barabbas now ! 
Was our outrage sore ? but the worst we spared, 
To have called these — Christians, had we dared ! 
Let defiance of them pay mistrust of Thee, 
And Rome make amends for Calvary ! 

tJ By the torture prolonged from age to age, 
By the infamy, Israel's heritage, 
By the Ghetto's plague, by the garb's disgrace, 
By the badge of shame, by the felon's place, 



THE POUND OF FLESH. 121 

By the branding tool, the bloody whip, 
And the summons to Christian fellowship — 
" We boast our proof that at least the Jew, 
Would wrest Christ's name from the Devil's crew 
Thy face took never so deep a shade, 
But we fought them in it, God our aid ! 
A trophy to bear, as we march, Thy band, 
South, east, and on to the Pleasant Land !" * 

Holy-Cross Day was appropriate for this work of 
striking the Jewish race in the face, as they fainted at 
the Christian door, and showing them now themselves 
the crucified, by a High Priest Christ taught to hate 
his enemies and pierce them with nail and spear. 
For it was about the time of the alleged discovery of 
the True Cross, already noticed, that this fable of the 
Wandering jew probably first began its career. f 

* Robert Browning : M Holy-Cross Day." 

f " Quel est done l'origine et la date de cette le*gende ? Je la 
crois, comme celle du voile de sainte Veronique et generalment 
comme toutes les histoires relatives a la Passion, nee vers le 
quatrieme siecle, a Constantinople, et contemporaine de sainte 
Helene et de la ddcouverte de la vraie croix. Mais ces tradi- 
tions sont reste*es longtemps orales." — Revue des Deux Mondes, 
Dec. 1, 1833. Published as introduction to Quinet's "Ahasuerus." 
Goethe connects Saint Veronica with Ahasuerus in the plan of 
his intended work elsewhere given. Veronica, whose name 
means the true portrait (i.e. of Christ which was retained on the 
, apron with which she wiped the sweat from his face), would be 
a natural counterpart of the man who refused all succour to the 
fainting sufferer. In enthusiasm about the true cross might be 
born a myth of the true i?nage> and of a " witness " to both. 



122 THE WANDERING JEW. 

Already at that time it was shown on the walls of im- 
perial Christendom that Jesus and Ahasuerus, as types 
of Humanity, had changed places — the nails and the 
thorn-crown transferred from one to the other ; and, j 
what is more, the cruel dogmas and superstitions 
abandoned by the one made by the other into the 
established religion of Europe. 

In the familiar legend of the True Cross, Helena 
is for a time baffled by a certain Judas, who has 
occult sources of knowledge, and warns the Jews that 
the empress is coming to find what, if found, will 
cause the downfall of their religion. But she having 
threatened a general massacre, the Jews inform her 
that this Judas can alone reveal the place of the ^ 
cross. He refuses; is starved at the bottom of a dry 
well for six days ; on the seventh, consents. When 
the cross appears, Judas is converted by its miracles 
and baptized. 

In a paper read to the New Shakspeare Society, 
April 9th, 1875, Miss Toulmin Smith announced her 
discovery that the story of the " Pound of Flesh " is 
contained in the thirteenth century English poem, 
" Cursor Mundi" there interwoven with the legend of the 
Finding of the Holy Cross. A Christian goldsmith, 
in the service of Queen Helena, owes a sum of money 
to a Jew ; if he cannot pay it at a certain time he is 



THE POUND OF FLESH. 123 

to render the weight of the wanting money in his own 
flesh. The bond is forfeit ; the Jew prepares to cut 
the flesh ; but the judges decide that no drop of blood 
must be shed. The Jew being thus defeated, Queen 
Helena declares that he must give up all his goods to 
the State and lose his tongue. This sentence is 
remitted on his agreeing to tell her where the Holy 
Cross is hidden, — which he did. 

It might easily arise, as a saga on this Jew's know- 
ledge, that he had personally participated in the hiding 
of the Cross, just after the crucifixion, and had been 
miraculously preserved through centuries as " a witness" 
to reveal its place of concealment, and thereby also to 
be " a witness " to the truth of the Christian legend. 
This might even have been in the minds of those who 
gave him the name of Judas, though perhaps that is 
merely a token of homage to the True Cross, as potent 
enough to convert a Judas. It is in harmony with 
the endless plots and counterplots of the True Cross 
Tale that the traitor of Christ should live to become 
traitor to Antichrist. At the same time there is a 
suggestion in it of precise retribution in kind which 
naturally combines with the story of the " Pound of 
Flesh." It is highly probable that Shylock and the 
Eternal Jew are twins of the True Cross Mythology, 
though Ahasuerus be a later name and figure. 



124 THE WANDERING JEW. 

But this Holy Cross itself was, and is, a perpetual 
symbol of the pound-of-flesh principle which lay at 
the foundation of the ancient Jewish system, and from 
it, after that foundation had crumbled for the Jews, 
was adopted as the chief corner-stone of Christianity. 
This I have demonstrated elsewhere,* and the history 
of the legend, with the conclusions based on it, though 
they may appear here as an episode, will be found 
closely related to the development of our subject. 

Mr. Swinburne speaks of Marlowe's Jew as the real 
man, while Shakspeare's is a mouthpiece for the 
finest poetry .*f* A surprising criticism ! The genesis 
of the conventional stage-Jew in England has already 
been given in this work (XL), and my reader will do 
well to refer to it at this point. 

It is sufficiently remarkable that, in this year 18S1, 
London should have witnessed on the stage, as acted 
by two eminent Shakspeare interpreters, the two 
stage-Jews which competed for popular favour in the 
time of Marlowe and Shakspeare. The "Shylock " of 
Mr. Booth is an odious, avaricious, bloodthirsty villain ; 
that of Mr. Irving is a fatal, powerful and pathetic 
character. The fine acting of Mr. Booth cannot strive 
against the art of Shakspeare, who at no point could 

Ni?ieteenth Century, May, 1880. 

f " Study of Shakspeare." (Chatto and Windus.) 



THE POUND OF FLESH, 125 

have raised sympathy with a man he meant should be 
utterly repulsive. Mr. Booth's personation rests too 
much on the traditional make-up of Shylock, which 
is really that of Barabas. When Edmund Kean, as 
a poor unknown actor, first went to play Shylock at 
Drury Lane, he raised some laughter behind the 
scenes by taking from his small bundle a black wig ! 
Black it was, not red ; human, not diabolic : the 
smiling company said, " That will be a failure " ; but 
it was not. One after another the outside traits of 
Shylock, costume borrowed from Barabas, have dis- 
appeared ; not a word of Shakspeare's text has had to 
disappear with them ; the character which the poet 
conceived has been largely unsheathed by Mr. 
Irving. 

We know that no such figure as that at the Lyceum 
appeared on Shakspeare's own stage at the Globe. 
Shylock, as acted by Shakspeare's friend Burbage, 
was a comic figure. His make-up consisted of ex- 
ceedingly red hair and beard, a false nose preter- 
naturally long and hooked, and a tawny petticoat. 
Such a figure must have been largely meant to make 
fun for the pit and gallery, of which Shakspeare was 
rarely oblivious, and Burbage never. 

But a conventional stage-figure is generally an 
evolution, and this farcical Shylock was no exception. 



126 THE WANDERING JEW. 

The famous Isaac of Norwich was a typical Jew in 
his time. A thirteenth century caricature, preserved 
in the Pell Office, shows us the popular notion of him. 
He is pictured as a three-faced idol surrounded by 
devils. The three faces are not especially ugly or 
comical, but repulsive enough ; and we may detect in 
the figure the reflection of a period when the dia- 
bolical theory of the Jew was serious, and no laughing 
matter. Similarly, in the old Miracle Plays, 'Satan 
was a serious figure, though he gradually became a 
mere laughing-stock,like Pantaloon in the pantomimes. 
The stage-Jew shared the same decline as the stage- 
devil — his supposed inspirer. In his malignant and 
formidable aspect he was, indeed, in Shakspeare's 
day, the main figure of Marlowe's popular play ; but 
even he had the long nose and sundry grotesque 
features ; and it can hardly be doubted that, in the 
still more ludicrous make-up of Shylock, the Globe 
Theatre followed the popular feeling. 

Perhaps there may be hidden in the name Shylock 
the idea of a lock-shearer, shaver of the last hair 
from his victim; at any rate "the shearer shears ' 
would include the whole significance of the story 
which Shakspeare took in hand. In the character 
of Shylock, he retained the grotesquerie which might 
please the rabble, at the same time turning their scowl 



THE POUND OF FLESH. 127 

to laughter. Even now, while Mr. Irving is giving 
his pathetic impersonation, the occasional laugh re- 
minds us how easily some parts of the text would 
lend themselves to a farcical interpretation, if the 
painted nose and comic gestures were present. But 
it is more remarkable to observe how rare and super- 
ficial are these ludicrous incidents. The farcical 
Shylock has passed away from the English stage 
through force of the more real character which 
Shakspeare drew. Shakspeare may not have in- 
tended all the far-reaching moral belonging to the 
ancient legend of the pound of flesh, but surely no one 
can carefully compare his Shylock with the Barabas 
r of his contemporary without recognising a purpose to 
modify and soften the popular feeling towards the 
Jew, to picture a man where Marlowe had painted a 
monster, if not indeed to mirror for Christians their 
own injustice and cruelty. 

Let us take our stand beside Portia when sfee sum- 
mons the Merchant and Shylock to stand forth. The 
two men have long legendary antecedents and have 
met many times before. There are eleven versions of 
the bond story in the early literature of Europe. In 
four of these versions no Jew appears. Karl Simrock 
believes that it is an ancient law-anecdote — an illus- 
tration of the law of retaliation pressed to an extreme, 



128 THE WANDERING JEW. 

The evidences he gives of its use for this purpose are 
interesting, and it appears to me probable that it 
might have been in this way that the Jew was first 
introduced into the story. Where a Jew and a Chris- 
tian confronted each other in any issue it might be 
assumed that all mitigations of the summum jus were 
removed from the question ; only the naked technical 
terms of the law could then be conceived as restrain- 
ing either from doing the utmost injury he could to the 
other. There is an old Persian version of the tale, in 
which, perhaps for a similar reason, a Moslem and an 
Armenian confront each other ; and in this case the 
failure of the bond is not because of the blood, but 
because of the extreme exactness of weight demanded 
by the court. An Egyptian form of the story has a 
similar end. 

Side by side, in all ages and races, have struggled 
with each other the principle of Retaliation and that of 
Forgiveness. In religion the vindictive principle has 
euphemistic names : it is called law and justice. The 
other principle, that of remission, has had to exist by 
sufferance, and in nearly all religions has been recog- 
nised only in subordinate alliance with its antagonist. 
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, blood for blood, 
is primitive law. Projected into heaven, magnified in 
the divine majesty, it becomes the principle that a 



THE POUND OF FLESH. 129 

deity cannot be just and yet a justifier of offenders. 
<l Without the shedding of blood there is no remission 
of sins." Since finite man is naturally assumed to be 
incapable of directly satisfying an infinite law, all 
religions, based on the idea of a divine lawgiver, are 
employed in devising schemes by which commutations 
may be secured and vicarious satisfactions of divine law 
obtained. Nature never forgives. No deity inferred 
from the always relentless forces of nature has ever 
been supposed able to forgive the smallest sin until it 
was exactly atoned for. For this reason the divine 
mercifulness has generally become a separate personifi- 
cation. The story of the "Pound of Flesh" is one of the 
earliest fables concerning these conflicting principles. 
The following legend was related to me by a Hindu, 
as one he had been told in his childhood. The chief 
of the Indian triad, Indra, pursued the god Agni. 
Agni changed himself to a dove in order to escape ; 
but Indra changed himself to a hawk, to continue the 
pursuit. The dove took refuge with Vishnu, second 
person of the triad, the Hindu Saviour. Indra flying 
up, demanded the dove ; Vishnu, concealing it in his 
bosom, refused to give up the dove. Indra then took 
an oath that if the dove were not surrendered he 
would tear from Vishnu's breast an amount of flesh 
equal to the body of the dove. Vishnu still refused to 

9 



4 

130 THE WANDERING JEW. 

surrender the bird, but bared his breast. The divine 
hawk tore from it the exact quantity, and the drops of 
blood — the blood of a Saviour — as they fell to the 
ground wrote the scriptures of the Vedas. 

Among the various versions of this story in India I 
have not been able to find any in accepted sacred 
books preserving with the simplicity of this folk-talc 
the ancient moral antagonism between the deities after- 
wards found in alliance as a triad. Hindu orthodoxy 
has outgrown the phase of faith which could sanction 
that probably provincial legend. Its spirit survives in 
one of Vishnu's titles, Yadjna Varaha, " the boar of 
sacrifice," derived from Vishnu's third incarnation, by 
which he saved the world from demons by becoming 
himself a victim. We may see in the fable reflection 
of a sacrificial age, an age in which the will and word 
of a god became inexorable fate, but also the dawning 
conception of a divineness in the mitigation of the 
law, which ultimately adds saving man-gods or demi- 
gods to nature-gods that cannot be appeased. 

The earliest version, probably B.C. 300, is the story 
in the Mahabharata (Vana parva) of the trial of the 
best of mankind, King Usinara. Indra and Agni, 
wishing to test his fidelity to the laws of righteous- 
ness, assume the forms of falcon and pigeon. The 
latter (Agni) pursued by the former (Indra) seeks and 



THE POUND OF FLESH. 131 

receives the king's protection. The falcon demands 
the pigeon, and is refused on the ground that it is 
written that to kill a twice-born man, to kill a cow, 
and to abandon a being that has taken refuge with 
one, are equal sins. This is a quotation from the 
Laws of Manu. The falcon argues that it is the law 
of nature that it shall feed on pigeons, and a statute 
against nature is no law. He (the falcon) will be 
starved, consequently his mate and little ones must 
perish, and thus in preserving one the king will slay 
many. The falcon is offered by Usinara other food — 
a boar, bull, gazelle — but the falcon declares that it is 
, not the law of its nature to eat such things. The 
king then declares that he will not give up the pigeon, 
but he will give anything else in his power which the 
falcon may demand. The falcon replies that he can 
only accept a quantity of the king's own flesh equal in 
Weight to the pigeon's body. Usinara gladly accedes 
to this substitution. Balances are produced, and the 
pigeon is placed in one scale. The king cuts off a 
piece of his flesh that appears large enough, but is in- 
sufficient ; he cuts again and again, but still the 
pigeon outweighs his piled-up flesh. Finally, all his 
flesh gone, the king gets into the scale himself. The 
two gods then resume their divine shape, announce to 
Usinara that for the sacrifice he has made he will be 



132 THE WANDERING JEW. 

glorified in all worlds throughout eternity, and the 
king ascends transfigured into heaven. 

This legend is repeated under the title Syena-Kapo- 
tiyam (Dove and Hawk) in the Purana Sarvasvan in 
the Bodleian Library, where it is in Bengali charac- 
ters. There is another version in the Markandcyo. 
Purana (ch. iii.), in which Indra appears to the sage 
Vipulasvan in the form of a large famished bird. 
Finding that this bird can only be nourished by 
human flesh, the sage appeals to his sons to give it 
some of their flesh ; and on their refusal he curses 
them, and tells the bird that after he has performed 
certain funeral ceremonies his body shall be for its 
nourishment. Whereupon Indra bids the sage abandon^ 
his body only by the power of contemplation, reveals 
his divine nature, and offers Vipulasvan whatever lie 
may ask. 

Indra here says, " I eat no living creature," which 
shows a moral advance. Perhaps his conversion may 
have been in some measure due to the teaching of 
Buddha. It is instructive to compare the Mahabhd- 
rata legend with an early Buddhist version cited by 
M. Focaux from the Dsang-loung* a version all the 
more significant because the hero of it, Sivi, was tra- 
ditionally the son of Usinara and had al reach' appeared 
* Lc Mahabarata, p. 241. 



• i 



THE POUND OF FLESH. 133 

in the fourth book of Mahabharata as tried in the 
same way with his father, and with the same results. 
Sivi had become a popular type of self-sacrifice. 
According to the Buddhist legend, Indra, perceiving 
that his divine existence was drawing to a close, con- 
fided to Visvakarman* his grief at not seeing in the 
world any man who would become a Buddha. Vis- 
vakarman declared King Sivi such a man. The falcon 
and pigeon test is then applied. But the Buddhist 
Sivi does not, like his Brahman prototype, offer to 
compensate the falcon with the flesh of other animals. 
He agrees to give his own flesh. The gods descend 
and weep tears of emotion at seeing the king as a 
skeleton outweighing the dove which all of his flesh 
could not equal. Nor is the Buddhist saint caught up to 
heaven. He is offered the empire and throne of Indra 
himself, but refuses it ; he desires only to be a Buddha. 
Sivi's body is restored to greater beauty than before, 
and he becomes the Buddha amid universal joy. 

Other versions show the legend further detached 
from brahmanic ideas, and resting more completely 
upon Buddha's compassionateness to all creatures. 
Of this description is one in the " Sermons " by 
Asphagosha, for the translation of which I am in- 

* The ' omnificent,' who offered up all worlds in a general 
sacrifice, and ended by sacrificing himself. 






134 THE WANDERING JEW. 



T 



debted to Professor Beal. Sakra (a name of Indra) 
tempted by a heretic to believe that the teaching of i 
Buddha was false, and that men followed it from 
motives of self-interest, sought for a perfect man who 
was practising austerities solely for the sake of becom- 
ing a Buddha. Finding one, Sivaka Raja, he agreed 
with Visvakarman to tempt him. All happens as in 
the old legend, except that Sivaka rests his refusal 
not upon the law of Manu, nor upon the sanctity of 
asylum, but upon his love of all living things. To this 
his mercifulness the falcon appeals, reminding him of 
its own young, and Sivaka calls for a knife and cuts 
off a piece of his flesh, not caring whether it is more 
or less than the body of the dove. He then faints. 
All living creatures raise lamentations, and the deitics> 
much affected, heal the wound. 

The influence of Buddhism is traceable in the 
modifications of the original legend, which show the 
sacrifice not accepted as it was in the case of Vishnu, 
and to some extent in that of Usinara, whose earthly 
life terminates. With Buddha the principle of re- 
mission supersedes that of sacrifice. His argument 
against the Brahmanic sacrifice of life was strong. 
When they pointed to these predatory laws of nature 
in proof of their faith that the gods approved the in- 
fliction of pain and death, he asked them why they did 



THE POUND OF FLESH. 135 

not sacrifice their own children ; why they did not offer 
to the gods the most valuable lives. The fact was that 
they were outgrowing direct human sacrifices — pre- 
serving self-mortifications — and animals were slain in 
commutation of costlier offerings. This moral revolu- 
tion is traceable in the gradual constitution of Vishnu 
as a Saviour. There is a later legend that Vishnu 
approached Sivi in the form of a Brahman in want of 
food, but would accept none except the flesh of Sivi's 
son Vrihad-Garbha. The king killed and cooked his 
son and placed the food before the Brahman, who 
then bade him eat it himself. Sivi prepared to do so, 
when Vishnu stayed his hand, revealed himself, re- 
stored the son to life, and vanished. This legend be- 
longs to a transitional period. Its outcome is found 
in several Hindu folk-tales, one of which has been 
told by the charming story-teller, Mr. W. R. S. 
Ralston. The king of a country is dying, and a poor 
man is informed of the fact by a disguised "fate." 
He asks if there is no way to save the king's life, and 
is told there is but one way ; if a child should be 
sacrificed, with its own consent, that would save the 
king. The man returns home and proposes to his 
wife to slay their beautiful little boy. She consents ; 
the boy having also consented, the knife is about to 
descend on the child, when the fates appear, an- 



1 3 6 THE WANDERING JEW. 

nouncing that they only wished to try his loyalty to 
his king, who had already recovered. 

We may feel pretty certain that originally that king 
was a deity, though not so certain that the knife was 
arrested without killing anything at all. In several 
popular fables we find the story preserved essentially 
in the old sacrificial form, to teach the rewards of self- 
sacrifice, though, in order to escape the scandal of a 
human sacrifice, the self-devotion is ascribed to 
animals. Thus, in the Panchatantra, a pigeon roasts 
itself to save a famished bird-catcher, who had just 
captured his mate ; and the bird-catcher presently 
seeing its radiant form rising to heaven, spends his 
life consuming his flesh in the fire of devotion, in 
order that he also may ascend there. 

In the Hebrew story corresponding to that of 
Vishnu and Sivi, the Hindu Abraham, we may see 
that where a god is concerned the actual sacrifice can- 
not be omitted. That may do in the case of a dying 
king or hungry hawk, but not for a deity. In the case 
of Abraham and Isaac the demand is not remitted 
but commuted. The ram is accepted instead of Isaac. 
But even so much concession could hardly be recog- 
nized by the Hebrew priesthood as an allowable 
variation from a direct demand of Jahve, and so the 
command is said to have been given by Elohim, its 



THE POUND OF FLESH. 137 

modification by Jahve. The cautious transformation 
is somewhat in the spirit of the disguises of the Aryan 
deities, who may partially revoke as gods the orders 
they gave as hawks. It would indicate a more ad- 
vanced idea if we found Jahve remitting a claim of his 
own instead of one made by the Elohim. 

It is worthy of a remark that in some regions where 
this change of names in the story of Abraham's 
sacrifice is overlooked or unknown by Semitic re- 
ligionists, there has sprung up a tradition that the 
sacrifice was completed, and the patriarch's son 
miraculously restored to life. Thus, in another branch 
of the Jewish religion we find Mohammed flinching at 
the Biblical story. He does not like to admit that 
Allah altered his word and purpose except for a 
serious consideration, so he says, " We ransomed him 
with a noble victim." The Moslems believe that Isaac 
was not then born, and that it was Ishmael across 
whose throat Abraham actually drew the knife, which 
was miraculously kept from killing the lad, according 
to some, but others say resulted in a death and 
resurrection. 

In the year 1879 the highly educated State of 
Massachusetts was thrilled with horror by the tidings 
that a man named Freeman had offered up his beauti- 
ful and only child, Edith Freeman, as a sacrifice to 



1 38 THE WANDERING JEW. 



* i 



God. It occurred in the historical town of Pocasset. A 
thousand years ago the Northmen who first discovered 
America wintered there, and possibly they there 
offered human sacrifices to their god Odin — that is, if 
they got hold of one or two red men ; for there has 
been a notable tendency among men in such cases to 
prefer other victims than themselves for their gods. 
Since that first landing of white men in America the 
religion of Odin had yielded to that of Christ ; Po- 
casset and all New England had been converted to 
Christianity ; the Bible had found its way into every 
home. Yet this well-to-do citizen, Mr. Freeman, 
and his wife, had learned in Sunday School about 
Abraham's touching proof of his faith. They had ^ 
pondered the lesson until they heard the voice of 
Abraham's God summoning them to a similar sacrifice, 
and they committed a deed which probably would 
have shocked even those rude Vikings who wintered 
at Pocasset a thousand years before. So much might 
the worship of a pitiless primitive deity arrest the 
civilisation of a household in the land of Charming 
and Parker. They prayed over the little girl, then the 
knife was plunged into her heart. Little Edith is now 
in her grave. The God of Abraham and Isaac got 
his pound of flesh this time. The devout priest of that 
horrible altar has just passed from his prison to an 



THE POUND OF ELESH. 139 

asylum. To the many who have visited him he puts 
questions hard to be answered. " Do you believe the 
Bible or not ?' he says. " If you do, and have read 
the account of Abraham, why should you deny that 
God could require a man to sacrifice his child ? He 
so required of me. I did hope and believe that he 
would stay my hand before the blow fell. When he 
did not I still believed he would raise my child to life. 
But that is his own affair. I have given that which I 
loved most to God because He commanded me." 
The American people waited to see whether a Christian 
community which trains up children to admire the 
faith of Abraham would hang them when they grow 
up to imitate that faith so impressed upon them. 
The embarrassing dilemma was escaped after eight 
months, by getting Freeman into an asylum for the 
insane, without trial. A rather mean way of confess- 
ing that theocratic piety is republican insanity ! 

I observed, soon after the occurrence of this tragedy, 
a picture of it in the Police News exposed in the shop 
windows of London. The designer had placed a crucifix 
near the little victim's head. It is probable that Free- 
man and his wife never saw a crucifix in their lives ; 
they belong to the hardest, baldest dogmatic Protes- 
tantism. The rude artist perhaps placed the crucifix 
in his picture because the Abrahamic sacrifice was 



140 THE WANDERING JEW. 

supposed to be typical of a holier one — a sacrifice in 
which a Son was offered up to satisfy the fatal law of 
a Father. In the human sacrifice symbolised by that 
crucifix culminated all these sacrifices of which men- 
tion has been made ; and there was embodied that 
principle which has maintained through the ages that 
though to forgive may be human, to avenge is divine. 
Let us return now to Shylock and the Merchant 
whose life is forfeit. Shylock is a primaeval Jew ; he 
represents the law, the letter and rigour of it. He is 
Indra tearing Vishnu's breast ; Elohim demanding 
Isaac's death ; the First Person exacting the Second 
Person's atoning blood. His bond, his oath registered 
in heaven, its sanction by Venetian law, are by him 
identified with eternal justice. It is the irrevocable 
" thing spoken," fatum y weird, or word. Portia is 
exact in telling him that he represents that "justice " 
in whose course, " none of us should see salvation.' 
The Jew personates his ancient god precisely. Nor 
is there wanting a certain majesty in his position. There 
is nothing mean about Shylock now, whatever there may 
have been at first. He has been called avaricious. 
But, as we have already seen (XII.), the wealth of the 
Jews was the main factor in their survival. There is, 
indeed, an illustration of this in the only version of 
the Bond legend which makes any pretension to be 



THE POUND OF FLESH. 141 

considered historical. A Jew named Ceneda forfeited 
a pound of his flesh to a Christian merchant, on a 
wager ; the case was brought before the Pope, 
Sixtus V., who decided that the Christian must pay 
two thousand scudi to his treasury for attempting 
manslaughter, and the Jew pay in an equal sum for 
having hazarded his life, that being a taxable pro- 
perty belonging to the Pope. Balzac tells us of a 
mediaeval seneschal in France who declared the Jews 
to be the best taxgatherers in his region. It was his 
custom to let them gain money as bees collect honey : 
then he would swoop down on their hive and take 
it all away. The Jews were driven by oppressive 
statutes to the dealings in money which brought 
opprobrium upon them ; and in hating Antonio 
because he lent money without interest, and so 
lowered the rate of usance in Venice, Shylock was 
hating him for undermining the existence of his tribe. 
Shylock scorns thrice his principal. For now he has 
been summoned by his own woes, the taking away of 
his daughter and his property, including that ring 
mourned because given by his lost Leah — artfully 
contrasted with the surrender by the Christian lovers 
of the rings they had vowed never to part with — to 
stand forth as an avenger of the ages of wrong heaped 
upon his race. That is an Elohistic moment for 



i 4 2 THE WANDERING JEW. 

Shylock, and ducats become dross in its presence. 
When the full tidings of his woes and wrongs arc told 
him he cries, " The curse never fell upon our nation 
till now : I never felt it till now." Thenceforth we 
may see in Shylock the impersonation of the divine 
avenger of a divinely chosen people, and the majesty 
of his law confronting an Edomite world. 

On the other hand stands Antonio, representing 
rather feebly, until he too is summoned from being a 
mere rich merchant to become a shorn victim, the 
opposite principle. He stands for the Christ, the 
Forgiver, the Sufferer. In the course of its travels 
the legend had combined with one told by Hyginus. 
The patriot Moros having conspired to rid his country 
of its tyrant, falls into the hands of that tyrant, Diony- 
sius of Sicily, who orders him to be crucified. But 
Moros is allowed a respite and absence of three days 
to visit his sister, his friend Selenuntius having agreed 
to become his hostage. On his way back, Moros is 
impeded by a swollen river, and when he reaches the 
place of execution finds his friend on the point of 
being nailed to the cross. The two friends now insist 
each on being crucified for the other, at which sight 
Dionysius is so affected that he releases both, resolves 
to be a more humane king, and asks the friends to 
take him as " the third in their bond of friendship." 



THE POUND OF FLESH. 143 

It is remarkable that this legend (which suggested to 
Schiller his ballad Die Biirgschaft, the Suretyship) 
should have been a popular one at the beginning of 
the Christian era, introducing as it does an exactor of 
vicarious suffering — that too by a cross — and ending 
with the tyrant becoming one in a trinity of friendship. 

Shakespeare has brought this vicarious feature into 
a prominence it never had in any version he could 
ever have seen, and his art, creating as it must in 
organic consistency, has dramatised the psychological 
history of mankind. 

Antonio, the merchant called on to suffer, is the 
man who gained nothing at all from the bond. He 
has incurred the danger and penalty in order that his 
rather worthless friend Bassanio may get the money 
necessary to secure a rich marriage which shall free 
him from his debts. It is the just suffering for the 
unjust. Antonio is the man who gives, hoping for 
nothing again ; in low simplicity he lends out money 
gratis ; and, when Shylock agrees to lend the three 
thousand ducats, the merchant says, " This Hebrew 
will turn Christian ; he grows kind." At the trial, 
Antonio speaks like the predestined victim : 

I am a tainted wether of the flock, 
Meetest for death. 

And, when the trial is over, Antonio is the only man 



1 



144 THE WANDERING JEW. 

who offers to relax his hold on the Jew's property. He 
gives up his own half, and takes the other only to give 
it away to Shylock's daughter and her husband. 

To be kind Antonio calls Christian ; but it was not 
that spirit which finally brought Shylock into the 
same fold with his judges. His life is spared on 
condition of his becoming a Christian. Professor 
Morley and other critics say that was harsh. But 
Shylock is no longer a genuine Jew, and Shakespeare 
properly relieves that race of his connection. The 
Jews had indeed, in primitive ages, begun with the 
eye-for-an-eye principle, but fiery trials had long 
taught them patience under injury. Shylock, remind- 
ing Antonio, when he asks help, of his outrages, says : 

Still have I borne it with a patient shrug, 
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe. 

So had it been for many ages, and the Jew had rele- 
gated the principle of vengeance to his fossil theology, 
practically becoming the patient victim ; while, on the 
other hand, Christianity, reaching the throne, had 
antiquated Christ's principle of mercy, and was 
dealing out the rigours of the Judaic law which Israel 
had outgrown by suffering. Shylock had grandly 
asserted the humanity of the Jew, in the first words of 
that kind ever heard in Europe ; but he had gone on 
to assert his Christianized nature. " If we arc like 



THE POUXD OF FLESH. 145 

you in the rest, we will be like you in that. If a Jew 
wrong a Christian, what is his humility? revenge ; if 
a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance 
be by Christian example ? why, revenge. The villainy 
you teach me I will execute." But when Shylock 
thus repairs back to the old eye-for-an-eye spirit, when 
he draws from the armoury of the ancient law the old 
weapon of retaliation, it is only to find that the 
sacrificial knife grown rusty for a Jew is bright and 
keen enough in Christian hands. In pressing to 
practise the blood-atonement and vicarious principle 
he enters upon Christian ground, and Shakspeare 
rightly baptizes him a Christian. 

We may naturally question whether Shakspeare 
meant this irony. Did he intend any subtle hit when 
he made these Christians claim as a co-religionist, 
ripe for baptism, a man who had just attempted to 
take a fellow-man's life ? That cannot be affirmed ; 
but it is notable that there should be in the play 
another passage liable to that construction. Shylock's 
enemies have just converted his daughter Jessica into 
a good Christian ; and the first sign of the work of 
grace in her heart is the facility with which she steals 
and squanders her father's money. Shakspeare does 
not fail to connect with this pious robbery the 
Christian customs of the time towards Jews. When 

10 



i 4 6 THE WANDERING JEW. 

the robbery and elopement have been planned, the 
Jew's Christian servant, Lancelot, says to Jessica : 

There will come a Christian by 
Will be worth a Jewess' eye. 

That seems to be a play upon the then familiar 
phrase " worth a Jew's eye " — a Jew having often to 
pay an enormous sum in order to avoid having his 
eye put out. With that Christian usage the poet 
apparently connects the robbery of Shylock's treasure. 
So by adopting the Christian usage of the time, by 
saying to Antonio what King John said to the Jews 
— " Your money or your flesh " — Shylock had given 
evidence of a change of heart, and his right place was 
in the Christian fold. 

But among all these representative figures of the 
Venetian court-room, transformations from the flying 
doves and pursuing hawks, bound victims and exact- 
ing deities of ancient mythology, there is one who 
possesses a significance yet to be considered. That is 
Portia. Who is this gentle woman in judicial 
costume ? She is that human heart which in every 
age, amid hard dogmatic systems and priestly in- 
tolerance, has steadily appealed against the whole 
vindictive system — whether Jewish or Christian — and, 
even while outwardly conforming, managed to rescue 
human love and virtue from it. With his wonted vet 



THE POUND OF FLESH. 147 

ever-marvellous felicity, Shakspeare has made the 
genius of this human sentiment slipping through the 
technicalities of priest-made law a woman. In the 
mythology of dooms and spells it is often that by the 
seed of the woman they are broken : the Prince must 
remain a Bear till Beauty shall offer to be his bride ; 
the Flying Dutchman shall find repose if a maiden 
shall voluntarily share his sorrow. It is, indeed 
the woman-soul which has silently veiled the 
rude hereditary gods and laws of barbarism — the 
pitiless ones — with a host of gentle' saints and inter- 
cessors, until the heartless systems have been left to 
theologians. Inside the frowning buttresses of 
dogmatic theology the heart of woman has built up 
for the home a religion of sympathy and charity. 

Portia does not argue against the technique of the 
law. She agrees to call the old system justice — so 
much the worse for justice. In the outcome she 
shows that this so-called justice is no justice at all. 
And when she has shown that the letter of "justice" 
kills, and warned Shylock that he can be saved from 
the fatal principle he has raised only by the spirit 
that gives life, she is out of the case, # save for a 
last effort to save him from the blind law he has in- 
voked. The Jew now sues before a Christian Shylock. 
And Portia — like Mary, and all sweet interceding 

10 — 2 



I 

148 THE WANDERING JEW. 

spirits that ever softened stern gods in human hope 
— turns from the judicial Jahves of the bench to the 
one forgiving spirit there. " What mercy can you 
render him, Antonio ?" The Christian Gratiano in- 
terposes, " A halter gratis : nothing else, for God's 
sake." A natural appeal for the victim-loving God ; 
but the forgiving Christ is heard, however faintly, above 
the Christian, and Antonio forgives his part of Shy- 
look's penalty. 

" Vengeance is mine," says the deity derived by 
fear from the remorseless course of sun and star, ebb 
and flow, frost and fire. Forgiveness is the attribute 
of man. We may reverse Portia's statement, and say , 
that, instead of Mercy dropping as the gentle rain 
from heaven, it is projected into heaven from compas- 
sionate human hearts beneath. And heavenly power 
doth then show likest man's when mercy seasons the 
vengeance of nature. From the wild forces above not 
only droppeth gentle rain, but thunder and lightning, 
famine and pestilence ; it is man with his lightning- 
rod, his sympathy, his healing art, who turns them 
from their path and interposes a shield from their 
fury. When, as the two walked together in the night, 
Leigh Hunt looked up to the heaven of stars, and 
said, " God, the Beautiful," Carlyle looked, and said, 
" God, the Terrible." It was the ancient worshipper 



1 



THE POUND OF FLESH. 149 

of the Laws of Nature beside Abou ben Adhem, who 
loving not the Lord, yet loved his fellow men, and sees 
a human sweetness in the stars. All religions, beginning 
with trembling sacrifices to elemental powers personified 
— powers that never forgive — end with the worship of 
an ideal man, the human lover and Saviour. That 
evolution is invariable. Criticism may find this or 
that particular deified man limited and imperfect, and 
may discard him. It may take refuge in pure theism, 
as it is called. But it amounts to the same thing. 
What it worships is still a man — an invisible, vast 
man, but still a man. To worship eternal love, 
supreme wisdom, ideal moral perfection, is still to 
worship man, for we know such attributes only in 
man. Therefore the Shylock-principle is non-human 
nature, hard natural law moving remorselessly on its 
path from cause to effect ; the Portia-principle, the 
quality of Mercy, means the purely human religion, 
which, albeit for a time using the terms of ancient 
nature-worship and alloyed with its spirit, must be 
steadily detached from these, and on the ruins of every 
sacrificial altar and dogma build the temple whose 
only services shall be man's service to man. 



XIV. 

THE WANDERING JEW IN FOLK-LORE. 

In the East and South, beneath climes that suggest 
an ideal paradise of repose or idle felicity, the undying 
saints were represented as dwelling in enchanted 
islands far from the toiling world, or slumbering in 
secret grottoes, while those whose immortality was a 
doom were compelled to roam restlessly over the 
earth. But when these myths had migrated into the 
active regions of Europe they were steadily trans- 
formed. It was felt, to be hardly a satisfactory 
distribution of parts for the saintly immortals to be 
sleeping or enjoying themselves with fairies while the 
evil ones were so busy careering through earth and 
air. So, gradually the saintly sleepers awake. The 
Seven Sleepers sally forth as the Seven Champions 
of Christendom. Joseph of Arimathea cannot lie 
down in his sacred sepulchre which he had given for 
the body of Jesus, and becomes a holy wanderer. 



THE WANDERING JEW IN FOLK-LORE. 151 

St. James emerges from the rock which had closed 
around his body like soft wax, and leads Spain against 
the Moors. St. John does not rest in his grotto at 
Ephesus, but makes pilgrimages, on one of which he 
asks alms of Edward the Confessor, near Westminster 
Abbey, who gives to the mendicant a gold ring, after- 
wards sent him from the East, with the saint's 
benediction. St. Peter goes abroad also. When the 
first Abbot of Westminster is about to be ordained in 
the Abbey, St. Peter appears in the night, crosses the 
Thames in a boat, himself ordains the Abbot, and 
leaves a wondrous fish to convince the Archbishop 
next day that the consecration has been performed, 
rendering the future Deans of Westminster responsible 
to Peter alone, and able to preach what heresies they 
like, without episcopal interference. Popular supersti- 
tion is sometimes good-hearted, and liberated even 
the sorcerer Merlin from his prison of air, as appears 
in the lines of Southey : 

" In his crystal ark 
Whither sail'd Merlin with his band of bards, 
Old Merlin, master of the mystic lore ; 
Belike his crystal ark, instinct with life, 
Obedient to the mighty Master, reached 
The land of the Departed."* 

* Madoc, xi. This, however, is contrary to Welsh orthodoxy. 
I remember being present at a dinner-company in Wales, given 



152 THE WANDERING JEW. | 

But while Merlin thus finds freedom again ending 
in repose, Arthur comes forth from his subterranean 
palace to lead the hunt, or from his Avalon to wing 
his way in form of a raven. 

Thus the doomed Wandering Jew, under whatever 
name, finally found himself wandering in good com- 
pany. This opens the way for human compassion to 
proffer those little mitigations of divine remorsc- 
lessness which, as they gradually appear in folk-lore, 
are such severe, because unconscious, satires upon the 
deity of theology. The sentence of the deity, or of 
the sadly deified Jesus, once uttered cannot be 
revoked ; but the human heart is no such victim of 
its own egotism or passionate impulse. Thus, Kuhn 
(2, 32) mentions the belief in Westphalia that the Jew 
may obtain a night's repcse if there be left in a field 
two harrows with the teeth downward. If one wishes 
to do the god-like thing he must leave the teeth of 
his harrow upward ; then the Jew must wander on. 
In some other regions of Germany (Wiittke, 759) ; the 
Jew can find rest at any place where two oaks grow 

to Ralph Waldo Emerson, when a gentleman presen: 
sceptical enough to assure the eminent American that though 
he had often passed the traditional spot of Merlin's aerial 
prison, he had never heard any voice from the air, and did not 
believe the story. Emerson answered : " You must be a bold 
man." 



THE WANDERING JEW IN FOLK-LORE. 153 

together in such a way as to form a cross. In Olden- 
burg it is said he can rest from the middle of May to 
the end of July, which is also the time when the Wild 
Huntsman may find repose. An old Metz picture 
shows the Jew with Wodan's flying hair and mantle, 
but with a kindly countenance. It is only in a recent 
instance that anything diabolical has been associated 
with him pictorially, this being in a Lorraine engrav- 
ing of 1842, where he has the hat and feather of Fra 
Diavolo. 

There is a tone of pity in the old verses which 
spread abroad the fable in Flanders, and has thence 
gone through many lands as The Wandering Jew's 
Complaint, though with many variations. I find them 
quoted in Mr. Hoffman's book, referred to elsewhere. 
The burgesses of Brabant address the Wanderer : 

" We used to think your story 

Was but an idle dream ; 
But when thus wan and hoary 

And broken down you seem, 
The sight can not deceive 
And we the tale believe. 

u Are you that man of sorrow 

Of whom our authors write — 
Grief comes with every morrow, 

And wretchedness at night ; 
Oh, let us know are you 
Isaac, the Wandering Jew ? 



154 THE WANDERING JEW. 

"Then he replied, ' Believe me, 

I suffer bitter woe ; 
Incessant travels grieve me — 

No rest's for me below ; 
A respite I have never, 
But onward march forever ! 

" ; Twas by my rash behaviour 
I wrought this fearful scathe : 
As Christ our Lord and Saviour 

Was passing to the grave, 
His mild request I spurned, 
His gentle pleading scorned. 

" A secret force expelled me 
That instant from my home, 
And since the Doom hath held me 

Unceasingly to roam — 
But neither day nor night 
Must check my onward flight. 

" I have no home to hide me, 
No wealth can I display ; 

Yet Unknown Powers provide me 
Five farthings every day ; 

This always is my store, 
'Tis never less nor more.' " 



I may here mention an extremely important work, 
Histoire de VImagerie Populaire, par Champflcury 
(Paris : Dentu, 1869), which contains a number of 
pictures taken from the old ballads and folk-books 



THE WANDERING JEW IN FOLK-LORE. 155 

concerning the Wandering Jew. The early pictures 
represent the Jew as a man of noble form, and 
generally of a handsome and melancholy countenance. 
The only picture in the volume which betrays anti- 
Jewish feeling is a modern one from Sweden (where 
the Wandering Jew is still believed in), which repre- 
sents him in semi-caricature, carrying top-boots at his 
back. In most of the pictures the boots worn consti- 
tute a prominent feature. This work of Champfleuiy 
is of value beyond its pictorial representations, on 
account of the curiosities which the author has dis- 
covered concerning the adventures of the legend 
among rustic populations. The author does not give 
us his authority for saying that the W r andering Jew 
appeared in some of the mediaeval miracle-plays, but 
he shows that he was introduced into a French ballet, 
Mariage de Pierre de Provence et de la belle Maguc- 
lonne, dance par son Altesse Roy ale dans la Ville de 
Tours, le 21, en son Hostel, and at Paris in 1638. 
There may also be found in this work the Breton 
ballad of the Wandering Jew, consisting of 180 verses, 
sung at country fairs, to the popular air Giierz, Sanies 
Anna. This ballad is very ancient, and much more 
interesting than that in Percy's Reliques. The 
W r anderer calls himself Boudedeo, and tells of the 
many countries he has visited. He has always five 



156 THE WANDERING JEW. 

sous in his pocket, and is never disturbed by sickness 
or hunger. The ballad ends, 

" Chretiens, priez Dieu pour le malheureux Boudedeo !'' 

Champfleury describes a Wissembourg picture which 
shows a beggar raising his hat to the Wanderer and 
the latter drops his five sous into the beggar's cap. 
This incident tells much of the popular sympathy 
felt for persons believed to be the doomed man, and 
is remembered by Beranger in his poem : 

" Plus d'un pauvre vient implorer 
Le denier que je puis repandre, 
Qui n'a pas le temps de serrer 
La main qu'au passant j'aime a tendre." 

Champfleury remarks that, in popular belief, it was 
always for inhumanity that Ahasuerus was punished ; 
and the meaning of this Wissembourg picture is that 
as he was punished for lack of charity, he is saved by 
his charity. The picture shows a citizen giving the 
Wanderer a glass of beer. It is all a lesson of 
humanity, but is pictured on a background of such 
inhumanity on the part of Christ, that Ahasuerus, 
giving away his sous, seems to have taken the place 
in human sympathy of the Jew who cursed him. 
Dr. Coremans, in his Bulletin de la Commission 



THE WANDERING JEW IN FOLK-LORE. 157 

royale tfhistoire de Belgique (X., No. 1) says that most 
of the Belgian villages have their legend of the 
passage of the Wandering Jew through them, and 
that there is a general notion that he rejuvenates old 
women. 

The Man in the Moon with his thornbush— if, as 
some think, he represents the doom of a Jew, who 
picked up fire-wood on the Sabbath, doomed to go on 
picking up sticks forever, and be bayed at by Gabriel's 
hounds— might typify the shrivelling up in English 
folk-lore of the great myths of earthly immortals, in- 
cluding Ahasuerus. 

Mr. William Henderson gives the following example 

from the North-country: "An old woman of the 

North Riding once asked a friend of mine whether 

it was wrong to wash on Good Friday. ' I used to do 

so,' she said, ' and thought no harm of it, till once, 

when I was hanging out my clothes, a young woman 

passed by (a dressmaker she was, and a Methodist) ; 

and she reproved me, and told me this story. While 

our Lord Jesus was being led to Calvary, they took 

him past a woman who was washing, and the woman 

" blirted " the thing she was washing in his face; on 

which he said, " Cursed be everyone who hereafter 

shall wash on this day !" And never again,' added 

the old woman, ' have I washed on Good Friday/ 






158 THE WANDERING JEW. 

Now it is said in Cleveland that clothes washed and 
hung out to dry on Good Friday will become spotted 
with blood ; but the Methodist girl's wild legend 
reminds me more of one which a relation of mine 
elicited from a poor Devonshire shoemaker. She was 
remonstrating with him for his indolence and want of 
spirit, when he astonished her by replying, ' Don't 
'ee be hard on me. We shoemakers are a poor slob- 
bering race, and so have been ever since the curse that 
Jesus Christ laid on us.' ' And what was that ?' she 
asked. ' Why,' said he, ' when they were carrying him 
to the cross, they passed a shoemaker's bench, and the 
man looked up and spat at him ; and the Lord 
turned and said, " A poor slobbering fellow shalt thou 
be, and all shoemakers after thee, for what thou hast 
done to me." ' "* 

Such, by the blessing of Protestantism, is the out- 
come of the great legends of Veronica and Ahasuerus! 
Tithonus, outliving his time, is changed to a grass- 
hopper. Another instance of the chirpings to which 
great myths are reduced may be heard from our 
above-mentioned " Seven Whistlers," of which in- 
genious use is made by the authoress of " That Lass o' 
Lowrie." Mr. James Pearson contributed to " Notes 

* Folk-lore of the Northern Counties, Published for the 
Folk-lore Society by Satchell, Peyton and Co. 1S79. P. 82. 



^ THE WANDERING JEW IN FOLK-LORE. 159 

and Queries" (September 30, 1871) the following: 
' One'evening, a few years ago, when crossing one of 
our Lancashire moors, in company with an intelligent 
old man, we were suddenly startled by the whistling 
overhead of a covey of plovers. My companion re- 
marked that when a boy the old people considered 
such a circumstance a bad omen, 'as the person 
who heard the Wandering Jews '—as he called the 
plovers — 'was sure to be overtaken with some ill 
luck.' On questioning my friend on the name given 
to the birds, he said, 'There is a tradition that they 
contain the souls of those Jews who assisted at the 
I crucifixion, and in consequence were doomed to float 
'' in the air forever/ When we arrived at the foot of 
the moor, a coach, by which I had hoped to complete 
my journey, had already left its station thereby 
causing me to finish the distance on foot. The old 
man reminded me of the omen." 

This superstition is connected with the Gabriel- 
hounds, believed in Yorkshire to be human-headed 
dogs, or sky-yelpers, as Wordsworth calls them. That 
poet tells of an aged peasant— 

" With ample sovereignity of eye and ear ; 
Rich were his walks with supernatural cheer ; 
He the seven birds hath seen that never part, 
Seen the Seven Whistlers on their nightly rounds, 

•■■> 
J 






160 THE WANDERING JEW. 

And counted them ! And oftentimes will start, 
For overhead are sweeping Gabriel's hounds, 
Doomed with their impious lord the flying hart 
To chase for ever on aerial grounds." 



I may quote here part of the interesting account of 
superstitions concerning the Wandering Jew contri- 
buted to " Notes and Queries " (vol. xii. p. 503) by 
Mr. V. T. Sternberg. " Sometimes, during the cold 
winter nights, the lonely cottager will be awoke by a 
plaintive demand for ' Water, good Christian ! water, 
for the love of God !' And if he looks out, he will see 
a venerable old man in antique raiment, with grey 
flowing beard and a tall staff, who beseeches his 
charity with the most earnest gesture. W T oe to the " 
churl who refuses him water or shelter ! My old 
nurse, who was a Warwickshire woman, and, as Sir 
Walter Scott said of his grandmother, ' a most azcfi' 
leerl knew a man who boldly cried out, ' All very fine, 
Mr. Ferguson, but you can't lodge here !' And it was 
decidedly the worst thing he ever did in his life, for 
his best mare fell dead lame, and corn went down I am 
afraid to say how much per quarter. If, on the con- 
trary, you treat him well, and refrain from indelicate 
inquiries respecting his age — on which point he is very 
touchy — his visit is sure to bring good luck. Perhaps, 
years afterwards, when you are on your death-bed, lie 



THE WANDERING JEW IN FOLK-LORE. 161 

may happen to be passing, and if he should, you are 
safe ; for three knocks with his staff will make you 
hale, and he never forgets any kindnesses. Many 
stories are current of his wonderful cures, but there is 
one to be found in Peck's History of Stamford which 
possesses the rare merit of being written by the patient 
himself. Upon Whitsunday, in the year of our Lord 
1658, ' about six of the clock, just after evensong,' one, 
Samuel Wallis, of Stamford, who had been long 
wasted with a lingering consumption, was sitting by 
the fire, reading in that delectable book called Abra- 
ham's Suit for Sodom. He heard a knock at the 
door, and, as his nurse was absent, he crawled to open 
■ it himself. What he saw there Samuel shall say in 
his own style : ' I beheld a proper, tall, grave old man. 
Thus he said, " Friend, I pray thee, give an old 
pilgrim a cup of small beere?" And I said, "Sir, I 
pray you, come in and welcome." And he said, " I 
am no sir, therefore call me not sir ; but come in I 
must, for I cannot pass by thy doore." After finishing 
the beere, " Friend," he said, " thou art not well ?" I 
said, " No, truly, sir, I have not been well this many 
years." He said, " What is thy disease ?" I said, " A 
deep consumption, sir ; our doctors say, past cure : 
for truly, I am a very poor man, and not able to 
follow doctor's counsel." " Then," said he, " I will tell 

11 



162 THE WANDERING JEW. 

thee what thou shalt do ; and, by the help and power 
of Almighty God above, thou shalt be well. To- 
morrow, when thou risest up, go into thy garden, and 
get there two leaves of red sage and one of bloodworte, 
and put them into a cup of thy small beere. Drink 
as often as need require, and when the cup is empty, 
fill it again, and put in fresh leaves every fourth day, 
and thou shalt see, through our Lord's great goodness 
and mercy, before twelve dayes shall be past, thy 
disease shall be cured and thy body altered." ' After 
this simple prescription, Wallis pressed him to eat. 
But he said, ' No, friend, I will not eat ; the Lord 
Jesus is sufficient for me. Very seldom doe I drinke 
any beere neither, but that which comes from the 
rocke. So, friend, the Lord God be with thee.' So 
saying, he departed, and was never more heard of ; 
but the patient got well within the given time, and for 
many a long day there was war hot and fierce among 
the divines of Stamford, as to whether the stranger 
was an angel or a devil. His dress had been minutely 
described by honest Sam. His coat was purple, and 
buttoned down to the waist ; ' his britches of the same 
couler, all new to see to ;' his stockings were very 
white, but whether linen or jersey, deponent knoweth 
not ; his beard and head were white, and he had a 
white stick in his hand. The day was rainy from 



THE WANDERING JEW IN FOLK-LORE. 163 

morning to night, ' but he had not one spot of dirt 
upon his clothes.' Aubrey gives an almost exactly 
similar relation, the scene of which he places in the 
Staffordshire moorlands. He there appears in a 
purple shag gown,' and prescribes balm-leaves." 

Brand mentions having seen one of these 'impostors' 
going about Newcastle-on-Tyne, followed by a crowd, 
and murmuring to himself " Poor Jack all alone l" 
Probably Brand did not hear the phrase rightly, 
since the cry of the Wanderer was " Poor Joe all 
alone !" There was a crossing-sweeper near St. Paul's 
Churchyard, who murmured the same, of whom there 
is an engraving in the British Museum. A picture of 
the Newcastle man was made for the Musgraves of 
Eden Hall, which has beneath it "Poor Joe all alone !" 
My friend Mr. W. B. Scott, who once resided at New- 
castle, writes that he remembers hearing of him. 
" He seemed to have left an impression of a some- 
what respectful kind, but from what cause I never 
heard ; probably he had a history of a melancholy 
kind, and had been left alone by some calamity." 

This, so far as I can learn, was the last appearance 
in the world of any man pretending to be the Wander- 
ing Jew, if indeed he did so pretend, and the honour 
was not thrust upon him by the superstitious crowd. 
There had been advantages enough in earlier times 

11 — 2 



1 64 THE WANDERING JEW. 

to entice Ahasuerus, or " the famous Joseph," to 
make his appearance. He came as a " witness " for 
Christ ; he was generally a pious Christian ; a tra- 
dition tells of his gambling in Naples, but, as the 
people there invoke their saints for luck in gambling, 
the exception is not considerable. Jurisconsult Louvet 
heard him preaching to street crowds in a French 
province like a revivalist friar. But in England com- 
mon sense gradually chilled the Wandering Jew. When 
it was found that he was not above receiving sixpences 
to support his imperishable existence the public lost 
interest in him. 

A question [addressed by me a few weeks ago to 
the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle elicited the following- 
answer : 

" It is quite true that a man who was known as 
* The Wandering Jew ' lived in Newcastle during the 
latter part of last century. He left a son, who I 
believe has lived in Hull the greater part of this 
century, and who is now a very old man indeed, 
keeping a small public-house named the Cricketers' 
Arms. He is very eccentric, is known as ' Topper, 
the Newcastle Fossil/ and attracts a deal of attention 
on account of his appearance and the condition of his 
house. He is a very peculiar-looking man, with 



THE WANDERING JEW IN FOLK-LORE. 165 

features of a decided Jewish cast His clothes appear 
to be as old as himself. He has never been known to 
be clean : and old people in Hull do not remember 
the counter or floor of his house to have been washed. 
He is supposed to be emulating ' Dirty Dick ' of 
London in this respect. 

"George Cooper." 
Hull 

This may be regarded as the epitaph upon an 
ancient dream which branched into a vast and 
various mythology, and, in its time, bore for millions 
their hopes of a renovated earth, and their visions of 
resurrection from the sleep of death ! 



XV. 

THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 

Having, as a figure of popular faith, gathered to him 
all related elements of mould and decay, and found fit 
extinction in the Newcastle " fossil " just mentioned, 
Ahasuerus rises for new wanderings as a poetic 
ideal. 

The Germans were the first to deal seriously with our 
legend, and their literature of the Wandering Jew is 
indicated in this chapter. The subject attracted the 
unhappy DANIEL FRIEDRICH SCHUBART during his 
imprisonment. Carlyle, in the notes to his Life of 
Schiller, says the idea of making old Joannes a tempo- 
ribus, the ' Wandering,' or, as Schubart's countrymen 
denominate him, the ' Eternal Jew,' into a novel hero 
was a mighty favourite with him. " In this antique 
cordwainer, as on a raft at anchor in the stream of 
time, he would survey the changes and wonders of 
two thousand years : the Roman and the Arab were 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 167 

to figure there, the Crusader and the Circumnavigator, 
the Eremite and the Thebaid, and the Pope of Rome. 
Joannes himself, the Man existing out of Time and 
Space — Joannes, the unresting and undying — was to 
be a deeply tragic personage. Schubart "warmed him- 
self with this idea, and talked about it in his cups, to the 
astonishment of simple souls. He even wrote a cer- 
tain rhapsody connected with it, which is published in 
his poems. But here he rested ; and the project of 
the Wandering Jew, which Goethe likewise meditated 
in his youth, is still unexecuted. Goethe turned to 
other objects, and poor Schubart was surprised by 
death in the midst of his schemes, on the 10th of 
October, 1791." But the project, as we shall see, is not 
unexecuted. 

Schubart's Rhapsody appeared in his " Poems, 
Frankfort, 1787."* His Ahasuerus has retired into 
the wild solitudes of Mount Carmel. There he is 
seen, with frantic laughter, casting away the dry skulls 
of his relatives, which break to pieces, crying, " That 
is my father ! Those -are my wives ! these my chil- 
dren ! They could die, but I — outcast— cannot die !" 

* The outlines of German poems that follow, are condensed 
from a pamphlet entitled : — Die Sage vom ' Ewigen Juden] Hire 
fioetische Wandlung und Fortbildung. Von Friedrich Helbig. 
Berlin, 1874. For this pamphlet and assistance in its translation 
I am indebted to Fraulein Almata Jacobi (Bremen). 



1 68 THE WANDERING JEW. 

And again, " Jerusalem fell ; I crushed the babe, I 
rushed into the flames, cursed the Roman ! — Rome 
fell, whole nations perished, and — I remained !" He 
tries to kill himself in different ways, but in vain. He 
feels pain acutely, but has to endure every variety of 
it, even to the agonies of the moment of death, with- 
out this moment ever arriving. The snake bites 
him, the dragon tortures, the burning forest blisters 
him. He says to himself, " Under my feet the mine 
exploded and threw me high into the air ; sense- 
less I fell down, and found myself roasted amidst 
blood, and brains, and bones." He is obliged to carry 
on a corpse-like body, infirm, smelling of the grave ; 
and through thousands of years he must see, like a 
yawning monster, an everlasting sameness. The 
rhapsody brings the Wanderer to a peaceful end. 
Ahasuerus throws himself down from the top of 
Carmel into the abyss, " and night covers his bushy 
eyelids. An angel carries him into a recess in the 
rocks. ' There mayest thou sleep now/ says the 
angel ; ' sleep, Ahasuerus, sleep soundly ! God's 
anger does not last for ever.' " 

In 1 807 appeared the ballad of The Eternal Jew,by 
ALOYS Schreiber. The torture of this Ahasuerus 
consists in his not being able to enjoy life and nature, 
open to all other men, on account of his restlessness. 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 169 

He cannot drink the water of the fountain, he cannot 
rest in the shade of a tree, he cannot break a flower to 
enjoy its smell, for which he longs ; he must start, he 
must wander. In this he differs from Schubart's 
Ahasuerus, who had long been weary of life. Being 
continually obliged to renounce everything, he at last 
becomes timid, shy ; he flies all men and hurries on 
heedlessly, Finally he observes a crucifix by the way- 
side ; about to rush on, an impulse brings him to his 
knees, imploring the Crucified for forgiveness. Christ 
answers him from the cross, "Whoever has failed 
may repent ; and none who loves and believes in me 
shall need to shun my countenance." The Wanderer 
is found dead, kneeling before the cross. 

WiLHELM MtJLLER, in his Wanderlieder (published 
in his works, 1830) has a poem on " The Eternal Jew," 
which pictures the desolation and loneliness that 
torture a life satiated to disgust, longing for rest and 
death. It is pervaded by melancholy. " Although I 
have seen everything I am never allowed to rest !" 
All around him has an end : the river in the ocean, 
the eagle on the Alps, the cloud in the falling rain, 
and also " to the tired wanderer a certain limit has 
been fixed. What, does he complain of his day's 
misery? — before night death will have taken him 
home." The end of the poem is a wish of the poor 



170 THE WANDERING JEW. 

Wanderer that those who have finished their earthly 
pilgrimage might, ere they go to sleep for ever, ask 
of God one hour's rest for him. 

NlKOLAUS Lenau has treated the subject in a 
similar manner. The scenery of his poem, Ahasuerus, 
the Eternal Jezv, is a lonely heath. In a distant 
meadow shepherds are seen surrounding and weeping 
over the corpse of a beloved youth. Whilst they are 
thus standing a Wanderer passes that way: his hair is 
grey, his countenance pale, cold, deeply wrinkled ; his 
beard long and white, his fiery eyes in dark sockets. 
He walks on to the bier, and calls out, with mingled 
mockery and mournfulness, "Suppress your ungrateful 
tears ; his rest is good ; oh yes, his rest is good ! 
Though fools like you complain, his heart is still ; 
while mine beats on by night and day, in restless 
longing to find its sabbath in the grave !" The 
Wanderer utters the philosophy of Schopenhauer, 
explaining that the earth is only the lie of Paradise, 
that it is always the same old delusion of Time — all 
flowering to its destruction : a philosophy which ter- 
minates in a marriage with Madness, personified in 
Lenau himself. 

Meanwhile, says the poem, the shepherds cover the 
coffin. Suddenly the stranger gets sight of the 
crucifix on the lid of the coffin. He is frightened, and 



f 

THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 171 

tears come to his eyes. Now the Lenau-Schopen- 
hauer turns out to be Ahasuerus. He tells the story 
of his life in the usual form of the myth. He tells the 
different kinds of death he had vainly sought. Then 
he wanders on, on — on ; above his head you hear the 
whizzing of the birds ; a long shadow walks behind 
him ; the shepherds tremble and make the sign of the 
cross. 

Although Adalbert vox Chamisso was by birth 
French, his life and culture were German ; his mixed 
, origin is shown in his subjective poem, the " New 
Ahasuerus" (1836), where the Wanderer is simply a 
lover whose mistress has married another ! This re- 
jected lover compares himself to Ahasuerus, who can- 
not die or rest until the Day of Judgment, while the 
faithless lady represents the fallen city of Jerusalem. 
Ahasuerus says, " Time stands still before me ; the 
age of man is as one moment, and the moments ages. 
Every hundred years I come once more to Jerusalem, 
mourning over its cold ashes, trying to put the ruins 
in their old place again, but nobody takes notice of 
me ; evermore I come to the same thing — a grave !" 
Ahasuerus is " the son of sorrow turned into stone." 

The poem of A. W. SCHLEGEL, "The Eternal Jew," 
follows the old myth, with nothing new. His Ahasu- 
erus, on account of his unbelief, wanders through the 



172 THE WANDERING JEW. 

world as a solace for all those who are miserable, 
until the reappearance of Christ releases him. 

JULIUS Mosen is the first who treated the subject 
in a fuller and more independent way. His " Ahasu- 
erus" (1838) is an epic. In the notes it is stated that 
the myth belongs to the poet's earliest recollections, 
the supposed Wandering Jew having passed through 
his birthplace, and that a shepherd had spoken to him. 
The poem carries this idea out with poetical realism. 
Mosen's idea of the myth is human nature imprisoned 
by an earthly existence. Ahasuerus symbolises the 
spirit of Tradition embodied in an individual being, 
who, at first in unconscious obstinacy, but at length 
deliberately, opposes himself to the God of Christen- 
dom. Mosen gives his Ahasuerus from the first a 
human trait. His deceased wife has left him two 
beautiful children, Eve and Reuben. A young Roman 
prince, living at Jerusalem, likes these children, and he 
wishes to take them with him to Rome. He applies 
to Pilate, who orders Ahasuerus to part with the chil- 
dren. The father in his desperation implores the 
assistance of Jesus, the new prophet. He will believe 
in him and his new doctrine, if he can save his chil- 
dren. Jesus will not grant such private wishes, but 
goes on to prophesy the fall of Jerusalem. Upon 
this Ahasuerus tears his clothes into pieces, and in 



r 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 173 



pain and wrath accuses Jesus of falsehood and im- 
posture : " Thou art our God ? And yet to save thou 
hast no power ! If man or God, thou hast deceived 
the people !" When the Roman prince comes to 
fetch the children, Ahasuerus has slain them. In his 
despair he becomes more and more a disbeliever. 
What, he asks himself, did Israel commit to become 
so wretched ? " Through its piety it has been led to 
misery. Why, then, does man crowd after this 
haughty God ? I will cast off his memory ; death to 
this Nazarene, to God, to everything !" In this excite- 
ment Ahasuerus scornfully forbids Jesus to rest at his 
door when he asks that favour. Jesus pronounces his 
Sentence in these words, " Thou shalt live without rest 
thy immortality upon earth !" 

The Archangel Michael appears and gives Ahasuerus 
a hope that mercy may be obtained at three different 
times of trial. The trials follow. Ahasuerus has 
married again and has once more two children, Eve 
and Reuben. Rome declares war against Judea, Titus 
surrounds Jerusalem ; Ahasuerus is full of resentment 
against God, who declines to help, and in his anger 
sets the temple on fire. During the conflagration, 
with his children at his side, he enters the flames, 
which do not touch him. Eve's lover, Matthias, who 
has become a Christian, for that reason rejected by 



174 THE WANDERING JEW. 

Ahasuerus, serves in the Roman army and comes 
rushing through the flames to save his beloved. 
Ahasuerus bids him welcome as a suitor, and pushes 
him into the flames. His children shriek with terror, 
and Ahasuerus throws them both after him, crying, 
" Here, heartless God ! now thou canst rejoice !" 

The first trial thus passes without redemption for 
Ahasuerus, and the second comes. Ahasuerus, having 
tried all possible ways of suicide, at last addresses 
Death with an appeal for pity. Death replies that he 
has orders to pass him by until he shall believe in 
God. Ahasuerus refuses. He is once more father 
of two beautiful children, Leah and Reuben. He 
enjoys the purest happiness, when all at once, in a 
thunderstorm, the God of the Jews appears to renew 
the old league with him against Christ. Ahasuerus 
consents, and is sent to Julian the Apostate as the 
great adversary of Christendom. Ahasuerus arrives 
there in the very moment when the wounded Julian, 
under a night-vision of Christ, begins to doubt his 
pagan faith. Ahasuerus gains him back to his former 
antagonism, and obtains permission to rebuild the 
temple at Jerusalem. But during the building, a 
dispute breaks out among the workmen. All order 
is gone, the work is interrupted ; one looks at another 
in amazement, when suddenly a prophet announces 



4 



^ THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 175 

I that for the reconstruction of the temple, the God of 
Judea and the God of the Christians were contending ; 

\ and that the latter could only be made to yield if the 
blood of two innocent children should soak the 
ground. Ahasuerus offers his own children. Before 
the sacrifice is finished, Christ invisibly takes the 

' children to Himself. Then the earth is rent asunder ; 
flames dart out and consume the new building. 

The second trial having passed without saving 
Ahasuerus, twice a murderer of his own children, the 
third trial advances. In this Death passes, with souls 
that have found repose, before Ahasuerus. Ahasuerus 
is in mortal agony ; his soul has nearly departed, but 

^ one point still remains, which no effort of his will can 
destroy. This point begins to assume a shape, a form 
once more. It is the same point of life which goes 
through all organic nature, and nowhere admits of 
destruction or state of rest. So our Wanderer, too, 
is once more filled with the wish to live. Again the 
God of Judea animates him to struggle against the 
doctrine of Christ. Again he follows his advice. He 
is now sent to Arabia, where Mohammed leads on the 
nations against the Cross. Ahasuerus allies himself 
with Mohammed to conquer Jerusalem ; he calls his 
people together, but they will not hear him, they have 
only stones to throw at him who suffered so much for 



176 THE WANDERING JEW. 

their sake. Then, with tears in his eyes, Ahasuerus 
leaves them for ever, and bestows henceforth his love 
upon Humanity. 

Mosen's Ahasuerus thus becomes a hero of 
Humanity, and his aims rise high above his first 
purpose. He is at the head of Mohammed's warriors, 
driving away the defenders of the Holy Sepulchre, 
menacing death to all who approach it. All fly away ; 
two children only remain — his own. Ahasuerus cm- 
braces them, and rejoices to have found them at last. 
Then Mohammed reminds him that he has sworn 
death to whomsoever should approach the sepulchre. 
Ahasuerus now cries out in his grief. For the third 
time he falls under the curse of his disbelief. He < 
calls for some one to slay him, and the third trial so 
releases him of his vow. Arrows dart through the air : 
the children fall ; he, too, sinks down, to awake once 
more for fulfilment of his real mission. " One thing- 
has been ended ; another begins, that neither time nor 
dark eternity can end. Loosed from Him and His 
mercy, henceforth I begin a long struggle until I have 
saved mankind from Him." Ahasuerus declares an 
everlasting war against Christ, " in the name of all 
forces and powers, all sighs, all sorrows, shed tears 
and blood, broken spirits and crushed hearts." Christ 
accepts the combat : " Thou facest Me, Thought 



' 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 177 

against Thought. Wrestle on and on, until at last, 
the circle ended, the Day of Judgment shall 
decide !" 

There the poem ends, or rather, as Helbig remarks, 
" does not end ;" the end is put off to the day of the 
last Judgment. The struggle now only begins, never 
•to end, between Ahasuerus and Christ, between 
Humanity and Christendom, between Earth and 
Heaven. 

Ludwig K6HLER, too, makes the Wanderer a type 
of human tendency. His New Ahasuerus (1845) is a 
prophet of freedom. The sufferer he has derided says 
to him : " March 0:1 then for eternities, until veracity 
has found its residence on earth, filling it with purest 
brightness! until a golden Dawn as of springtide breaks, 
and Liberty awakes the light now hidden in night I" 
Often the Wanderer thinks this morning has come, and 
exults in his hope of rest ; but his joy, his hopes are 
vain. Napoleon crushes the French Revolution, " the 
Burschenschaft " leads to the errors of Sand ; the 
rebellious Greeks are betrayed, and so on. Every- 
where is oppression of conscience and thought. 
Ahasuerus despairs, and complains that he cannot 
die, when suddenly Jesus addresses him with a 
rebuke : he tells Ahasuerus that he is unworthy of the 
longed-for liberty, so long as he has not mastered self 

12 



178 THE WANDERING JEW. 

and sacrificed his egotism. "Thygrave, not humanity, 
was thine aim, so thou hast striven in vain. Liberty 
shall be aim, not instrument to thee. Whilst thou 
wert complaining of Destiny, it went its way, and 
Liberty began its heavenly progression. 'Tis no dream 
and delusion ; ere thou thinkest, it sunders hell and 
displays its light. The world gets free. Already in 
the vale a stir is heard. Its reign is near !" With this 
vision of hope for the future the poet leaves us. 

Franz Horn (1818) published in Fouque's 
Frauentaschenbuch his novel " The Eternal Jew? His 
Ahasuerus is a rich Jew in Jerusalem, who only 
believes in Christ's external mission. He thinks 
that Jesus, though for the time full of humility, 
will rule with a commanding sceptre when clad in 
purple, and by his healing power will extirpate 
disease and death from the earth. In this he is dis- 
appointed : Jesus is laughed at, despised, ill-treated, 
and endures all unresistingly. Mistaken in his dearest 
hopes, Ahasuerus conceives a deep hate against 
Jesus. So, when the latter, fallen under the burthen 
of his cross, asks for a moment's rest at his door, 
Ahasuerus drives him on without compassion. Then 
Christ rises, and says : "Well, receive then what thou 
wishest ; live, live on, as never man before ; die not 
till thou hast become worthy to die !" 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 179 

And so it came : all around him died ; everything 
became strange to him ; only the sky above him 
remained the same. He comes to understand that 
Christ by his death has sealed death, and that he 
(Ahasuerus) by his life has to represent the insuffi- 
ciency and misery of mere life. He moves on with 
aimless strides, his form as of iron, his visage weather- 
beaten like lichened stone, a nameless grief upon his 
features. The scene of the novel is laid at the end 
of the Thirty Years' War. Ahasuerus has saved a 
young count in the tumult of battle, and afterwards, 
by telling him the story of his life, converts him from 
, the blasphemy and despair into which he had fallen 
by the sudden death of his family — a misfortune 
attributed to the appearance of Ahasuerus. 

From this novel, AUGUST KLINGEMANN (1827) 
took the subject of his tragedy, Ahasuerus. The 
Wanderer was a favourite character with the dis- 
tinguished actor Ludwig Devrient. With Klinge- 
mann the myth signifies purification by suffering 
in order to obtain an imperishable liberty. Christ 
appears as the mediator between natural and super- 
natural things, and points the wandering man to his 
coming empire. The hero of Klingemann's drama is 
the murderer of Gustavus Adolphus, the Count of 
Werth, a fanatical Catholic, who, in disguise of a 

12 — 2 



i So THE WANDERING JEW. 

Protestant, has assassinated the champion of Protes- 
tantism. The deed weighs heavily on his soul, drives 
him to melancholy and despair, and he finally drowns 
his conscience in Atheism. The son of Gustavus 
Adolphus enters his family as a visitor ; and in his 
presence, and that of his family, the guilty Count 
speaks of the deed with abhorrence. Only one person 
knows of his guilt — the mysterious man who saved 
him out of the battle. To get rid of him the assassin 
challenges him ; but his lance breaks on the breast of the 
stranger — for it is Ahasuerus, he who has blasphemed 
his Lord, like the now atheistical Count of Werth. 
The curse upon him is that which strikes the Denier 
of God. Ahasuerus, after the fruitless combat, reveals 
to the count his story, and his longing to die, im- 
ploring him no longer to blaspheme God. The Count 
after this discovery acknowledges the existence of 
God, and confesses his murder of Gustavus Adolphus. 
He then kills himself, and so finds rest ; but Ahasuerus 
wanders on — on ! 

Theodor Oelkers has treated the subject in a 
novel, Princess Mary of Oldenhojf, or the Wander- 
ing Jew, (Leipzig, 1848). Oelkers adds a curse upon 
Ahasuerus : in order to reconcile Christ he must 
sacrifice what is dearest to him, but his sacrifices are 
always ineffectual. He takes from time to time a 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 1S1 

wife, he has children ; he survives each wife, slays his 
children ; he is driven to do this by necessity, while 
conscious that the offerings will be in vain. He has 
the fearful gift of reading the future : foresees all that 
shall happen to himself and his beloved ones. In 
bitterness of heart he says : " Let men see in me how 
vain is their hope for divine love and mercy !" But 
at length he finds reason to hope for release at a very 
distant period. " I am only," he says, " condemned in 
Time : Eternity belongs to me, as it belongs to all when 
Time shall end. Then shall I be free to move about 
in endless regions, breathing the air of heaven ; then 
the partial tyranny of Grace shall be dethroned ; 
Justice will occupy the throne, sharing it with her 
sister, Love." 

Oelkers thinks that before this time comes there 
will also appear a Wandering Moslem and a Wander- 
ing Christian. 

Levin Schucking, too, brings our hero before us 
in an episode, full of imagination, called "The 
Three Suitors " which belongs to his novel The 
Peasant Prince, 185 1. In the hotel of " The Three 
Moors," at Augsburg, during the twelve nights after 
Christmas in the year 1700, three strangers met 
together. One was a weary half-decayed Jew, with a 
• long dirty gown, who next morning changes into a 



1 82 THE WANDERING JEW. 

handsome young Armenian Prince, Isaac Laquedam. 
The second was the Dutch admiral Van der Decken, 
who arrives in a carriage with four horses. The third 
was his Excellency the Master of Chase en chef, Herr 
von Rodenstein, with a large suite. These individuals 
have a rendezvous in this inn every hundred years, and 
pass one year together in revelling, after which they 
disappear. They lose their human form and wander 
as spectres, one over the earth, one over the sea, the 
third in the air, as the Eternal Jew, the Flying Dutch- 
man, the Wild Huntsman ; all in bond and service of 
Satan, except for this one year, wherein he has no 
power over them. Whenever one century is passed, 
Ahasuerus-Laquedam is seized by a burning fever, 
after which his body resumes the appearance it had 
when he raised his hand against Jesus. 

All three do a great deal of mischief during that 
year in quiet Augsburg, especially in the hearts of the 
young women. Among these is one distinguished by 
great beauty, but also by her haughtiness and disdain 
towards the male sex. All three try to win her proud 
and frosty heart, which unfortunately has been 
chained to an ugly, paralytic husband. She once 
-ays to them that she is not proud of her beauty, 
but that she would take a pride in standing a danger 
or conquering a difficulty of which, centuries later, 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 183 

the world would say, a mail would have beeji unable 
to subdue it. 

The handsome Armenian prince takes her at her 
word and invites her to follow him one whole year : 
she promises it, and gives him as pledge of her word 
a ring. The two others obtain similar promises. At 
the end of the year she accompanies the Armenian. 
Suddenly she sees his youth disappear, a musty smell 
comes from him, and a third shadow walks at their 
side. " Who are you," she cries aghast. " I am 
Ahasuerus !" She tries to fly, but Ahasuerus holds 
her with an iron hand. In her despair she sells her 
soul to the third shadow (the Devil) who promises her 
deliverance. But first, she has to keep her word to the 
Rodensteiner. With him, the Wild Huntsman, she 
rides through the air, and from aloft beholds the 
depravity of human life. From what she has seen, 
and from the wild ride, her soul and body are tor- 
mented, she is unable to go any farther, and again 
implores deliverance of the Devil. Already the Fly- 
ing Dutchman has come to claim fulfilment of her 
promise to him. The Devil agrees to save her if she 
will pledge him, besides her own, the soul of her 
child. 

" No, never my child, never 1" the tortured woman 
cries ; she prefers another year's ride, over the sea. 



1 34 THE WANDERING JEW. 

' Take her, she longs still for a third trial," says the 
laughing Devil to the Dutchman ; but he replies : 
1 The trial was great enough, she is released. Her 
force was superior to that of a man. A man would 
not have spared the soul of his child more than he did his 
own." She wakes to find her child sleeping sweetly 
in its cradle ; she finds also the three rings ; but from 
the dream of a night her beautiful hair was grey. 

Joseph von Zedlitz, an Austrian poet, in his Wan- 
derings of Ahasuerus (1844), transfers the end of the 
Jew's life to the Golden Age, when the reign of eternal 
Peace has begun. Ahasuerus has long been buried on 
Golgotha, when an angel awakes him, and bids him 
wander until Noah's white dove, the messenger of 
peace, comes back, bringing peace on earth and songs 
of joy, dispersing all wrath and hatred, uniting the 
nations under the sceptre of Humanity. Ahasuerus, 
lying in his grave, half-dreaming, sees history pass 
before his eyes ; he awaits the time that shall come. 
Whenever he thinks this moment has arrived, he rises 
from his grave, and wanders about to see the world. 
It seems to him that the Golden Age is near, when 
the Roman Empire sinks and the star of Christendom 
rises ; when the cherub's song of peace strikes his car, 
he begins his pilgrimage. He expected to find peace, 
but he finds ruins, ashes, death. He meets Attila's 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 185 

wild bands on his way. When Ahasuerus, 1300 
years later, rises once more, he finds another Attila, 
who wants to bend a whole world under his sceptre. 
Terror-stricken, Ahasuerus cries : " Who can say 
Attila will not return a third time?" and returning to 
his grave, he asks : " Jehovah, how long must I still 
sleep ?" 

Hans Christian Andersen's Ahasuerus is 
the angel of Doubt, who comes upon earth to live 
with men, whom he resembles, for like them he denies 
and doubts. He is born on earth at the same moment 
with Jesus, and now, as a human being, bears the 
name Ahasuerus. As a man he grows wiser and 
better, like his fellow-men, whose increasing perfection 
will, in many thousands of years, lead them to heaven. 
Then Ahasuerus too will return. 

After this Prologue Ahasuerus is seen as a Jewish 
shoemaker ; he is at the same time a favourite narrator 
of the stories of the Bible. Merry children, as well as 
serious Pharisees, come to his workshop, and listen to 
his words. He becomes conceited, and complains 
that he is only a shoemaker, and not allowed to sit 
among the Scribes. Among his auditors is young 
Veronica, who is enchanted with the new prophet 
from Nazareth, who had just made his appearance. 
Ahasuerus counts Jesus amongst the false prophets ; 



1 86 THE WANDERING JEW. 

he also regards him as the cause of the death of his 
mother and sister, who had been slain by the agents 
of Herod. But when he hears Jesus preach in the 
desert, he changes his mind, and shares the admiration 
of Veronica. Now, he thinks, the days of splendour 
v/ill come, according to the prophets, and the reign of 
David in all its magnificence. Judas, the friend of 
Ahasuerus, and the enthusiastic disciple of Jesus, is 
the first to doubt him. He thinks Jesus does not 
show enough energy in his proceedings, calls him a 
loiterer ; at length decides to test whether he is really 
the Messias. If so, legions of angels will certainly 
assist him at his call ; if not, he may perish. Judas 
betrays Jesus, in order to give him an opportunity to 
show his power — an idea suggested by Goethe. Th. 
hope of Judas is not realised. Jesus consents to be 
made a prisoner. " Man he was, and not Messiah !" says 
Ahasuerus, turning apostate ; "how could I imagine 
that the son of a carpenter was a prophet? He feels 
the cold, suffers hunger, thirst, needs sleep." 

After the usual scene on the way to Golgotha, a 
voice from above says to the disbelieving Ahasuerus : 
" Ahasuerus, Ahasuerus ! thou art the type of man- 
kind ; thou disputest and deniest God himself. Yc 
are all alike; so thou mayest wander until we shall 
meet once a^ain !" 



* THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 187 

It is not real Atheism, but a rigid Judaism that 
will not surrender to what the author deems the 
unfolding purposes of God, which appears in this 
Ahasuerus. 

The first person whom Ahasuerus meets in his 
wanderings is Barabbas, who lives as an hermit in 
Lebanon, repenting his sins. He has already been 
mentioned in the poem as a profligate who only 
knows the god of his senses ; but the crucifixion and 
the resurrection of Christ, which he has witnessed, 
have converted him. He receives his friend with the 
words, " Blessed be Jesus Christ." Ahasuerus answers 
with a curse. Full of wrath, not believing in the 
resurrection, he takes his leave of Barabbas. He trusts 
in the strength of Israel, but soon after he is told of 
Jerusalem's fall. He travels to Rome, where Domitian 
is persecuting the Christians. He rejoices when he 
sees the burning pyres and the Christian martyrs. 
He stands at the side of executioners who torture 
some Christians, Among these is Veronica. He 
cannot convert her, and tries therefore to slay her. 
He does not succeed in so saving her from torture, 
but is suspected and (apparently) killed by the ex- 
ecutioners. Ahasuerus awakes to find beside him the 
dead Veronica, and many other bodies of martyred 
Christians. He starts forth in terror to flee the king- 



1 88 THE WANDERING JEW. 

dom of the Crucified, which he sees consisting only 
of " graves laden with the smell of Pestilence." 

Having passed through distant parts of the world, 
Ahasuerus, at the end of three centuries, returns to 
Rome. He finds that the doctrine of Christ has 
conquered heathendom. The Emperor and his people 
are kneeling with Christ's name on their lips. " The 
spirit of Jehovah has left the earth ; his people is lost 
in this world-chaos. The old is all dead ; the new is 
vain and empty ! Jehovah ! my breast is Thy temple, 
the last in this ruined world !" 

Ahasuerus passes the Alps. The Huns sweep by. 
He inspires Attila to attack Rome and crush Chris- 
tendom. But he — he wanders on, farther on, to the 
region of the Northern Light. On his return he finds 
thick in the forests the symbols of Christ ; he finds 
Christ now worshipped in Gaul, and in Rome the first 
Pope. Compelled now to believe in the power of the 
Christian faith, he yet persists in his belief that a still 
greater God will come, the true Messiah promised to 
Israel. The poet then describes the small communi- 
ties of Jews, with their quiet and secret worship, still 
awaiting their Messiah. Some think he has come in 
the person of Mohammed, and to him Ahasuerus now 
goes. He advances with him to Jerusalem ; there he 
is about to set the temple on fire, when Veronica 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 189 

appears and prevents him. He journeys on. In 
Rome Charlemagne has been made emperor ; the 
Jews have become slaves of the Christians. The 
hate of this inflexible believer in Jehovah increases. 
By a vast leap the poet brings Ahasuerus to Canossa, 
where, full of astonishment, he sees the emperor, bare- 
footed and in tears, standing before the Vicar of 
Christ. Before such evidence of the Majesty of Chris- 
tendom, Ahasuerus, too, stands with bended head. 
He cannot escape this new kingdom, for he is in the 
closed yard of the world which it fills. " The emperor 
stood for nights ; my nights are millenniums !" 

And now for the first time the idea rises in him 
that he is not only the Opposing Jew, but that he 
represents everything earthly in conflict with the 
divine. 

The time of the Crusades comes. From all parts of 
the world the nations rush to Jerusalem, where once 
the altar of Jehovah stood. They are impelled by 
many selfish motives : no single thought or aim unites 
the warriors, and so they struggle in vain. Ahasuerus 
now learns to doubt the progress of mankind. In 
vain a master-builder beside his work instructs him 
that in the structure of the world God is the builder. 
" He does not die ; each century is a stone block 
added to the rest : so mankind gradually ascends." 



190 THE WANDERING JEW. 

" But," Ahasuerus says, " often the work stands still." 
" It does," answers the stonemason, "but only to gather 
new strength." To this Ahasuerus answers that all the 
blood that has been shed in the Crusades was of no 
use to Europe ; but the guildmaster replies that they 
formed a vast step in human progress, because they 
brought the different nations closer together, and 
brought " liberty " into the world. Many knights sold 
their estates, which passed into the hands of the com- 
mons; the supremacy of nobles was destroyed, new 
life sprang up in sciences and art. Then suddenly 
the cry of battle rings through the air, robber knights 
menace the peaceful citizens ; the tocsin sounds ; the 
workmen rush to the battlefield ; the building stops. 
Full of mockery and derision at this new rctrograda- 
tion in place of the vaunted human evolution, Ahasu- 
erus walks on. 

The errors of the age, the doings in the convents, 
the excesses of the Hussites, the mad demeanour of 
King Wenceslas, only increase Ahasuerus' disbelief in 
the progress of mankind. An angel leads him to 
Mayence, where Gutenberg's printing-press is seen. 
Ahasuerus does not believe in the importance of this 
invention. He also thinks Columbus a fool, but, 
nevertheless, follows him to the deep whirlpools of the 
sea, which he hopes will swallow him. But Columbus 



► 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 191 

is spared by the waves, he reaches land — the New- 
World is discovered. There the god of the primeval 
forest complains like Ahasuerus, because he has been 
roused from his rest and deep silence and is dragged 
into the history of men. The all-pervading Spirit of 
the Universe addresses him, "Oh, might the discovery 
of this new hemisphere come also to thee, that thou 
mightst see the divine wisdom, take comfort, and 
know that in the future of Humanity there shall be 
One people, One mind, Unity and Reason !" 

Amid the New World, and with this vision over it, 
Ahasuerus gains Belief. He now sees that " it was 
.the ruin of Israel, once as rich a land as America, to 
^reject the New, which comes from God." In human 
evolution the Old always denies the New : " God is 
born, crucified, and — lives." The wave of each cen- 
tury brings the accumulated treasures of the Past 
nearer to the shores of Perfection. 

Then Ahasuerus stretches out his hands towards 
the endless Ocean, and in the chaos of his mind he 
begins to understand what once he was and what has 
become of him. In his own life he sees the progress 
of mankind, and so the wings grow that bring him 
back to Heaven. But the time has not yet come, 
only a day of Eternity has elapsed ; and Andersen's 
Muse tells us in the last words of her song that " the 



192 THE WANDERING JEW. 

myth of Ahasuerus is only an echo of the endless tide 
of Time ; a better Scald will come and tell the mean- 
ing of that other pilgrimage." 

HELLER imitates Andersen in his poem, The 
Wanderings of Ahasuerus. In his introduction he 
says that Ahasuerus shall lead us through all nations 
to the modern world : from God becoming human to 
Humanity becoming God. In the first edition (1865) 
the poet did not bring his theme to its end. But in a 
later edition (1868) he continued his work, and leads 
his hero on to the days of Goethe. The conception 
and execution of his poem are exactly like those of 
Andersen, but Heller presents more historical details, 
and his ideas and suggestions are full of interest. 
His Ahasuerus is an adversary of Jesus, as one who 
does not comprehend his high mission and his own 
doctrine. A wealthy shoemaker, his workshop full of 
workmen, he is ugly and deformed ; his wife, how- 
ever, is beautiful. He is an old schoolfellow of the 
new prophet, who in former days has often been pro- 
tected by him when people asked him tauntingly his 
father's name. Ahasuerus's own son bears the name of 
Jesus. But now Ahasuerus calls Jesus an adventurer, 
who had always been a favourite of women, on account 
of his fine looks. He says Jesus has learned the black 
art in Egypt, which enables him to win the multitude 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 193 

with miracles ; that he misleads poor fishermen to 
leave their work and homes ; that he poisons the pure 
fountain of the Bible, deriving from it that he is the Son 
of Man. He, Ahasuerus, will unmask this dangerous 
impostor. So, when he is told by some children that 
a fine-looking man much like Jesus has sat down to 
take some rest at his door, he scornfully bids him 
move on, and not bring a curse upon his house by 
touching his threshold. Peter intervenes, but Ahasuerus 
laughs at him. Then Jesus rising, he answers, " Un- 
happy man ! the feelings that so violently move thy 
heart come from a misled but believing mind. Sincere 
as is thy anger, even now thy heart is kind. If thou 
couldst only understand me, no one would shed his 
blood for me like thou. The time will come when 
thou shalt know me. Until the day when all the 
w r orld shall have accepted Christianity thou shalt 
wander through the earth with thy people, spared by 
Death. Nations shall come and go, but ye shall 
remain until the day of the last trumpet." 

Ahasuerus re-enters his house speechless. On the 
day of the Passover, Saul comes to him, and is told 
what happened. He declares Jesus one of those 
fanatics who rise everywhere and disappear like 
meteors ; the streets of Rome are crowded with them. 
" Men," says Saul, " are bending under the burthen of 

13 



194 THE WANDERING JEW. 

their sins and long for forgiveness, which they do not 
find in their Ancient Law. Love, the only thing that 
brings release, must be delivered from the chains of 
the old institutions." Unconsciously, Saul is already 
of the new belief, and is soon after formally converted. 
Peter and James try to convert Ahasuerus also, but 
they succeed only in engaging him to hear Saul, now 
Paul, who preaches in Athens of Christ's resurrection. 
Ahasuerus finds out that this doctrine is not in the 
Scriptures : Paul must be deceived. He returns to 
Jerusalem, in his old disbelief. Jerusalem is con- 
quered, destroyed ; Ahasuerus joins in the combat ; at 
length all whom he has loved are buried, he leaves the 
ancient city in ruins : his wanderings begin. 

We find him again, with other fugitive Jews, in a 
cavern, gathered about an old Rabbi. They mourn 
for Jerusalem, but their master reminds them of the 
Law ; he exhorts them to adhere firmly to that — it is 
stronger than that of Christ's apostles, which is sealed 
only by a man, not by God. As Jewish apostles they 
go forth into the world. The war begins between 
Paganism, Christianity, and Judaism. Ahasuerus tries 
to win over the pagans, to bring back those that turn 
apostate. The wild movements and anomalies of the 
world gradually lead Ahasuerus to the hope of a 
kingdom not of this world. He is now seen longing 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 195 

for Jesus ; he flies the noisy world and arrives at the 
Lake of Tiberias. There Christ appears to him, and 
Ahasuerus implores forgiveness. He has already lost 
something of his rigid Jewish faith. When Con- 
stantine has become a Christian, and when Rome falls, 
he believes that his new idea will be realised : but no, 
straightway begin the disputes of Christian sects. 
Ahasuerus turns his back on the contending Gnostics, 
Simonians, Arians, and the rest, and comes to the 
desert, where he finds Anthony, the hermit. Anthony 
has delivered himself from the world and its con- 
troversies to find peace amid nature. They exchange 
their experiences and thoughts. Ahasuerus acknow- 
ledges that Christ's doctrine has spread a kingdom of 
love over the earth, but that his great work has been 
degraded to a mere fable. " I did not find the king- 
dom of God, but of men. Here I will rest until some 
Angel wakes me from my dream to begin once more 
my earthly pilgrimage." Anthony has the same faith ; 
he will struggle on patiently and imitate the life that 
was so full of suffering and love. Henceforth the two 
live together in a long brotherhood. 

This was the end of Heller's first edition. In the 
second he enlarged and transformed the entire poem. 
He separates the whole in three different wanderings. 
He calls the first, which we have already described, 

13—2 



196 THE WAKDERIXG JEW. 

Ahasuerus s Error of Faith ; the second, Picture of 
the Universe ; the third, Humanity. During his 
first pilgrimage, Ahasuerus moves still in the restricted 
horizon of a Pharisee, but he loses much of that in his 
intellectual intercourse with Anthony. In his second 
pilgrimage, although the whole scene of history lies 
open before him, he persists still in his hope of a com- 
ing Messias. At last he doubts that his hope will 
ever be realised ; he frees himself from his rigid belief. 
The discovery of the New World, the invention of 
typography, and the Reformation, he now regards as 
contributing to a free evolution of mankind, leading to 
the only true religion : Humanity. Ahasuerus, like 
Faust, sees in this the high destiny of mankind. 
History unfolds itself before Man ; he moves after it, 
observing, investigating, looking forward to the fulfil- 
ment of his desire. The movement of mankind ovcr 
the Old World goes on ; new gods replace the old ; 
contrasts of all kinds meet together — nowhere is room 
for God's empire of peace. Mohammed, too, is not 
the right prophet. Under Charlemagne and Leo the 
empire of God's majesty on earth is founded, but this 
is not the real empire of God for which Ahasuerus 
looks. Besides, it does not prove to be everlasting. 
Priesthood, to which all nations blindly submit, de- 
generates ; whilst in Germany, under the Saxon 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 197 

emperors strong conventional worldly power arises. 
Then a new Messias seems to appear in Hildebrand, 
this monk so possessed of worldly wisdom ; but his 
empire is only maintained by the strong reins of 
obedience, not by love. The Crusades do not satisfy 
Ahasuerus. New persons come before us, one form- 
ing a contrast to the other. Jehuda Levita, who 
praises the sublime inheritance of Adam against 
the " original sin " of Christendom ; then the pious 
buffoon, Francis d'Assisi, contrasting with Tannhauser, 
whom Ahasuerus meets in Rome, and whose longing 
for the fresh and natural world of his heathen land, 
amid the helpless ossification of the Christian priest- 
hood, he can well understand ; Dante, who tries at 
least to harmonise the contrasts in poetry ; Rienzi, a 
political fool, who makes a step backwards into the old 
Roman time ; Huss, who, a second saviour, a martyr 
of the old pure Christian doctrine, expires on the 
pyre. 

Then Ahasuerus begins to doubt of the duration of 
God's empire. When he sees how Christ is always 
vanquished, and has now been crucified so often, 
a deep melancholy overcomes him ; he longs for 
death, he is disgusted with seeing the world any 
longer. Then Faust appears to him, his congenial 
brother ; Faust, the realist, who enjoys the life and 



i 9 3 THE IVAN DERI A' G JEW. 

liberty given to him, who, though a true friend of 
Christendom, does not join the theological disputes, 
but with a happy mind prefers the fresh hearts of the 
people to the musty churches with their endless 
supplications. With Faust's appearance a change 
of mind comes over Ahasuerus. Both have still a 
third mythical brother, the Spaniard, Don Juan. 
Ahasuerus, the first-born, is continually occupied with 
the highest problems ; he takes no notice of life, and 
awaits the day when his faith will be one with that 
of Jesus. In sharp contrast with this, the Spaniard 
enjoys life and its pleasures, with all his natural 
enthusiasm. Between these two, as a mediator, stands 
Faust, susceptible of high and noble things as of the 
pleasures of the world. He opens Ahasuerus' heart 
to the love of humanity ; he teaches his dim eyes to 
look around him in the world ; he shows him all the 
productions of industry and art. In his house he 
shows him the wonders and first performances of 
typography ; he leads him to magnificent Florence, 
residence of the Medicis ; and, escaping the Spanish 
Inquisition, they voyage with Columbus to America. 
Ahasuerus, who until now thought the earth to be 
miserable and small, wishes to remain on it. 

In the third part of the poem, Ahasuerus leaves 
the New World and returns to the Old, to follow there 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 199 

the evolution of human thought. He goes to Rome, 
and rejoices to see the flourishing state of sciences and 
arts ; he finds there the great master, Raphael, who 
exalts Christianity into Humanity. There also he 
meets Luther, who, beholding the corruptions of the 
Church, conceives the idea of the Reformation. 

Robert Hamerling is the last German poet 
who has paid his respects to our myth. The hero of 
his poem, Ahasiierus in Rome (1867), however, is 
Nero, and not Ahasuerus. The latter is only, as by 
Klingemann and Horn, a kind of Nemesis in the 
piece, a supernatural power intervening in human 
actions. He presents a sharp contrast with Nero, 
who resembles Faust in his immense love of life, 
whilst Ahasuerus has come to Rome longing for 
death. He intends to accomplish Nero's fate, for in 
spite of their different natures, their mission is the 
same ; both are fulfilling and advancing the evolution 
of mankind. Especially in a place where the decayed 
past struggles with new forms of life, history needs 
such Titans of destruction as Nero, in order to hasten 
the crisis of events and advance human progress. 
Ahasuerus therefore makes Nero his unconscious 
instrument ; he pushes him on and on in his 
monstrous attempts. The supposed god, who can 
only operate by destruction, Ahasuerus treats as the 



200 THE WANDERING JEW. 

indestructible, and by this very faith prepares the way 
of Nero's humiliation. Ahasuerus animates Nero to 
burn Rome, and swings the first torch ; but he comes 
himself unharmed out of the flames, spared by the 
fire, to show Nero that there is still something on 
earth which to destroy is beyond his power ; some- 
thing like a phoenix rising out of ashes — the immortal 
humanity. For a moment Nero thinks himself equal 
to this new adversary. " I, too," he cries, " am indes- 
tructible : life in me is firmly anchored : nothing can 
ever change me ! I am I ! I cope with you : our 
combat will show if my intellectual indestructibility 
balances not thy bodily indestructibility !" 

Ahasuerus accepts the combat with the certainty 
that the hour of death has come for Nero. It arrives 
in the curse of satiety and disgust which overcomes 
Nero. He has enjoyed the pleasures of earth, and 
Olympus ; they have no more for him ; only one 
thing further remains for him — Hades. By force of 
magic he summons the dead ; his own victims start 
up before him, and, smitten with horror, he falls. 
Now, forsaken by his favourites and subjects, Nero 
escapes at the hand of the only one remaining — a 
devoted German — under the secret guidance of 
Ahasuerus, into the catacombs. He there finds a 
congregation of Christians, his mortal enemies. He 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 201 

offers his head to their revenge, and is told that they 
do not know such a sensation, that their hearts obey 
the law of love, a law which did not exist for him, 
because he did not feel anything above him, whither 
he could look with a longing eye. For the first time 
Nero finds a God who, instead of being worshipped 
and feared is beloved. He also understands that not 
pleasure but pain saves the world, and cries : " I see 
that the ever-creating womb of the human Mind is 
not exhausted ! The outworn world falls to dust : the 
human heart ever brings it forth anew." Thus Nero 
pronounces the inner secret of the Ahasuerus-myth 
(according to this poem). And although unable to 
submit to the new doctrine, he consecrates himself 
to the god of the infernal world, exchanging his 
longing for life with the ardent longing for death, 
according to Ahasuerus' prophecy. Ahasuerus himself 
appears in the hour of his adversary's death among 
the Christians, and the poet, in an original conception, 
makes him assume towards the end of his poem a 
gigantic shape. 

According to this, Ahasuerus, who once despised 
Jesus, was already on earth since time immemorial. 
For he is the first-born of the unborn, the first of the 
created beings : he is the first child of man, the first 
rebel, Cain, the murderer of his brother. Ahasuerus 



202 THE WANDERING JEW. 

first brought Death into the world, who now at the 
same time rewards and punishes him by sparing 
him. 

It is greatly to be regretted that the great brain 
which carried the legend of Faust to such noble fruit 
did not fulfil its design of giving poetic expression to 
that of the Wandering Jew. In his Dichtung unci 
Wahrheit, Goethe has sketched the design of this 
unwritten poem. A clever shoemaker with whom he 
once lodged in Dresden was to be a model for 
Ahasuerus. The shoemaker of Jerusalem was to be a 
character ; in his open workshop he talks with passers- 
by, and, after the Socratic fashion, touches up every- 
one in his own way. Even Pharisees and Sadducees 
like to talk with him, and Jesus with his disciples often 
stop there. The shoemaker is a firm secularist, but 
he feels a special affection for Jesus, whom he tries to 
persuade to give up his visions, and leave off drawing 
people away from their work into the wilderness. 
Jesus, on the other hand, tries to persuade his friend 
to his way of thinking. When Jesus has become a 
public character, Ahasuerus warns him that tumult 
will follow, and that he (Jesus) will have to place 
himself at the head of a party. Finally, when things 
have gone their course, Judas rushes into the shoe- 
maker's shop, in despair, declaring that in endeavour- 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY. 203 

ing to hasten his master's triumph he had only 
ruined him. Ahasuerus is in great excitement about 
his friend, and when he sees him passing his door 
reminds him of his warnings. Jesus does not answer, 
but just then the loving Veronica covers his face with 
a napkin, on which, as she raises it, Ahasuerus sees 
depicted the features of Christ, not as a sufferer, but 
transfigured and radiant. As he turns he hears the 
words : ' Over the earth shalt thou wander till thou 
shalt once more see me in this form !' When the 
shoemaker comes to himself he finds that everyone 
has gone to the execution. Through the empty 
greets he moves, and begins his wanderings. 

The way in which Goethe would have dealt with 
the theme is indicated by the fact he elsewhere 
mentions, that he had meant to bring Ahasuerus to a 
meeting with Spinoza. It will be seen, however, in 
this chapter, that a number of the best pens which 
have dealt with this subject have been spiritually 
moved by Goethe. 



XVI. 

THE NEW AHASUERUS IN FRANCE. 

IN the year l833 Edgar Quinet published his - Mys- 
tery • entitled Akasuerus. It seems an amazing fact 
that a work of this importance should never have been 
translated into English. It was well appreciated in 
France, and was the subject of the excellent review 
{Revue desDeuxMondes^c, 1833) which has already 
been referred to in this work. It is an epic in prose 
Am.d the stately Miltonic forms of Biblical and other 
mythology, and through a mist of mysticism, may be 
seen Edgar Quinet himself bent under the doom of 
turning the faith of his childhood, the illusions of 
all he loved, into mere conventionalised foliations of 
a frame around the reality of a creature moving 
about amid worlds for ever dead. 

His early faith having suffered what he fondly 
hoped might prove to be transient eclipse, he started 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN FRANCE. 205 

upon those restless journeyings through Europe and 
the East, which were still less restless than his spiritual 
wanderings ; but at no point could he see any faintest 
arc of a sun returning from its eclipse. The old light 
had for ever gone down. As he wandered there arose 
before him this other self, this doomed Ahasuerus. 
Through ten years he was writing it ; it was written, 
he has told us, on foot, on horseback, in the gondola, 
at sea ; in cathedrals of Germany, basilicas of Rome, 
in the convent of Bron, in the villas of Naples, and 
the almshouses of Morea. "Its aim is to reproduce some 
scenes of the universal tragedy played between God, 
Man, and the World." In the end Quinet married a 
German lady, Rachel by name, who appears in his 
dramatic epic also as the saviour of Ahasuerus. 

The work is divided into four " Days," with three 
interludes, a prologue, and an epilogue. The first day 
is " The Creation ;" the second, " The Passion," dis- 
cussed by the devils as a rather poor comedy. 
Ahasuerus appears in this second " Day." He is 
seated on his bench in an open door as Jesus passes 
with his cross, followed by a crowd which praises 
Barabbas and Pilate. Ahasuerus believes Jesus a 
magician, and when he says, " Is it thou, Ahasuerus?" 
the latter says, " I know thee not." " I thirst ; give 
me a little water from thy spring." " My well is 



206 THE WANDERING JEW. 






empty." " Reach thy cup — thou wilt find it full." 
" It is broken." " Help me to bear my cross along 
this hard path ?" " I am not thy cross-porter ; call a 
griffin from the desert." " Let me sit on thy bench at 
thy house door?" "My bench is full; there is no 
room for another." " On thy threshold ?" " It is 
empty, but the door is shut and bolted." " Touch it, 
and you can enter to get a stool." " Go thy way !" "If 
thou wilt, thy bench may become a golden seat in the 
house of my Father." " Go, blaspheme where thou 
wilt ! Thou hast already withered with thy footsteps 
my vine and fig-tree ; do not set foot on my stairway, 
it will crumble under thy speech. Thou wouldst be- 
witch me." " I wish to save thee." " Diviner, leave 
my shadow ! Thy road is before thee. March, 
march !" " Why hast thou said that, Ahasuerus ? It 
is thou who shalt march, even till the Last Judgment, 
more than a thousand years. Go take thy sandals 
and travelling raiment ; wherever thou passest thou 
shalt be known as the Wandering Jew. It is thou 
who shalt find no seat whereon to rest, no mountain - 
spring to slake thy thirst. In my place thou shalt 
bear the burthen which I leave on the cross. For thy 
thirst thou shalt drink what I have left at the bottom 
of my cup. Others shall take my coat, thou shalt 
inherit my eternal pain. Hyssop shall germinate in 



► 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN FRANCE. 207 



thy staff, wormwood increase in thy leather bottle ; 
despair shall cling as the leather girdle about thy 
loins. Thou shalt be the man that dies not. Thy age 
shall be mine. To see thee pass the eagles shall perch 
on their barn. The little birds shall half hide them- 
selves under the crest of the rocks. The star shall 
bend beneath the cloud to watch thy tears falling drop 
by drop in the abyss. I go to Golgotha ; thou shalt 
journey on from ruins to ruins, from kingdoms to 
kingdoms, without finding thy Calvary." 

This is about half of the sentence pronounced upon 
Ahasuerus. A hand had written on his house, " The 
Wandering Jew." Ahasuerus finds himself alone, and 
calls for Jesus to return ; he would speak only one 
word more ! After his sad soliloquy the angel 
Michael appears, and bids him travel onward. 
Ahasuerus enters his house once more and attempts 
to rest and eat with his father and children, but he 
cannot ; he must go, despite their pleadings. 

After a long and pathetic farewell to his family and 
his home, Ahasuerus passes out to the Valley of 
Jehoshaphat. Here, he says, he would build his hut 
upon the rock could he only find some water. The 
Valley bids him journey on : "I have neither well 
nor cistern ; those who dwell in my vale never thirst." 
" Where are thy date-trees planted ?" " I have none. 



2o8 THE WANDERING JEW. 






They who sojourn in my hill never hunger." " Find 
in thy brushwood some herb to heal this wound in my 
heart, which is like a point of iron ?" " My simples 
heal all pains, but not that of the heart in which a 
thorn rests." 

After much converse the Valley bids him adieu. 
" Talk no more where the dead sleep. I am silent." 
After that, whatever Ahasuerus says, Echo alone 
replies. His requests are successively in the words 
Jesus had addressed to him at his door, and Echo 
repeats his own refusals. 

The third "Day" is called DEATH. Death is 
represented under the name of Mob. And now a 
human spirit comes upon the scene — Rachel. As we 
have seen the tender Jesus passing out of life to blend 
with the remorseless elements, uttering the curses 
which find their echo in the heartless hills, and the 
winds whistling in the Valley of Death ; so now, on 
the other hand, we see a heart leaving the heavenly 
realm that smiles above human agony to share the 
earthly sorrow. In the presence of God and Christ, 
and the heavenly host, one angel has forgotten the 
wrongs of Christ so far as to shed a tear for Ahasuerus. 
For that she is cast out of heaven, banished to the 
earth, and made to dwell in the house of Mob (Death). 
Rachel and Ahasuerus meet, neither knowing any- 






THE NEW AHASUERUS IN FRANCE. 209 

thing of the other for a long time ; they are in love 
with each other ; and for a time the drama somewhat 
resembles that of Margaret and Faust, Mob taking 
the part of Mephistopheles. There is a very beautiful 
scene in which the Angel of Death (Mob) leads 
Ahasuerus and Rachel into the cathedral at Strasburg. 
There the mighty shades, royal and papal, demand of 
Ahasuerus his name. He will not utter it ; but 
Christ speaks from the stained window and declares 
him to be the Wandering Jew. The dead curse 
Ahasuerus, the cathedral curses him ; but Rachel 
pleads for him. While demons flash their flames 
around, Rachel cries : ° Be blessed, Ahasuerus ! 
Mercy for him, Lord ; open Thy heaven ! Are these 
the angels that watch at the gate of Paradise ? 
Angels, angels, open for me the gate ; there is also a 
place for Ahasuerus, is there not ? Oh, how flaming 
are their swords ! Oh, how heavy their bolts ! Come, 
come, Ahasuerus : the stars of Paradise are rising 
beyond the threshold !" 

Another motif from Goethe's Faust rises in the 
fourth " Day," the Day of Judgment, where Rachel 
and Ahasuerus (whom she calls Joseph) are seen in a 
desert, beside a waste ocean in the distance, and a 
ruin emblematic of the world now in ruins. Ahasuerus 
has exhausted every experience, except that of being 



210 THE WANDERING JEW. 

loved by Heaven. Rachel tells him that her Christ 
is a divine sea of love, into which they may together 
plunge and lose all memories and all longings. As 
Faust's contract with Mephistopheles holds the latter 
to bring him to an hour when he shall desire nothing 
beyond, an hour to which he shall say, " Stay, thou 
art fair !" so Ahasuerus is moved only by the pledge 
of his angel Rachel that no desire can arise beyond 
the divine Love. There is no water near ; so there 
in the desert Ahasuerus kneels, and Rachel baptizes 
him with her tears. 

As the world comes up before the seat of Judg- 
ment — cities, ages, continents, islands — curses fall on 
Ahasuerus. Rome, Babylon, Athens, the Highway, 
repeat the sentences of his doom in Jerusalem ; the 
Mountain offers to be his Calvary ; the Forest proffers 
him a Cross, and the Rivers would give him gall. 
But Christ speaks more kindly. Of all the universe 
Ahasuerus and Rachel now only remain. Christ 
offers now to give him his home in the East ; but 
Ahasuerus says he does not desire it. " I ask life, not 
repose. Instead of the steps of my house of Calvary, 
I wish to ascend without pause the stairway of the 
Universe." " Art thou not weary from thy first 
journey ?" " Thy hand, rising over me, has already 
dried my sweat. With thy benediction, I depart 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN FRANCE. 21 1 

this evening towards those future summits where 
thou already dwellest." " But who will follow thee ?" 
A voice of the Universe breaks in, " Not we ! If 
thou wilt, we will return on our steps ; but w r e cannot 
mount higher. Our wild steeds, our waves, our 
tempests are weary." Rachel says, "I! I will follow 
him ; my heart is not weary." Whereon the Universe 
cries, " A woman has lost me, a woman has saved 
me \" " Yes," declares Christ, " this voice has saved 
thee, Ahasuerus. I bless thee, the pilgrim of coming 
worlds, and the second Adam. Return me the burden 

of the Earth's pains Journey thou from life to 

life, world to world, from one divine city to another ; 
and when, after eternity, thou shalt have arrived at 
circle on circle of ' the infinite summit whither all 
things move, whither tend the souls and the years, the 
peoples and the stars, thou shalt cry to star, to people 
and universe, if they would pause, Climb on, climb 
for ever : it is lie re /" 

The epic closes with an impressive Epilogue. Christ 
is alone in the vault of the firmament. " Since the 
hour when Ahasuerus returned my Cup, the wound has 
come again to my side ; my tears fall into the abyss. . . 
The heavens are empty ; in the firmament I am alone. 
One after another the angels have all folded their wings, 
like the eagle when it is eld. My mother Mary is 

14 — 2 



212 THE WANDERING JEW. 

dead : my father Jehovah has said from his couch, 
' Christ, my age is on me. I have lived enough of the 
ages ; the worlds burthen me to lift ... I am cold 
... I am weary ... I thirst. My age is too great ; 
I see no more the light of thy aureole. Go ! thy father 
is dead.' . . . The firmament has cast its god from 
its branch, as the fig-tree its leaves. . . . Farewell, 
worlds, stars, dews of the morning and evening, which 
have saluted me by name when I was a child ... Is 
it true ? in the night, in the day, afar, near, is there no 
one?' Echo answers, * None.' * Life, truth, falsehood, 
love, hate, gall and vinegar mingled in my pyx — yes, the 
universe was I. I am a shadow ; a shadow that for 
ever passes ; I am the tear that ever trickles, the sigh 
ever renewed, the death that ever agonises ; I am the 
Nothing that ever doubts of its doubt, the Negation 
that ever re-denies itself.' " Eternity alone hears the 
sorrow of Christ, but it cannot aid him to weep, its 
eyes are dry ; it cannot promise love to the orphan- 
worlds he is leaving, for- in its breast is neither love 
nor hate. 'All is finished!' cries the universe- 
wanderer, who has no Rachel's tear to baptize him. 
' Lay me in the tomb of my Father. Be it so !' 
Eternity speaks : * For the Father and the Son I 
have digged a grave in a frozen star which rolls 
companionless, without light. The Night, beholding 



THE NE W A HAS UER US IN FRA lYCE. 2 1 3 

that pale star, shall say, c This is the tomb of some 
god.' " 

Then Eternity crumbles the worlds, the sphinx, and 
even the void, ending with a triumphant Mou 

3Ecj) Jfinit k master* b'gjx&m£xx&. 
tyxttz poxu cthxi qtu i'toahit 

The romance of The Wandering Jew, by Eugene 
Sue (1844), fr° m which the majority of people have 
derived what impressions they may have of the legend, 
is so " sensational " that its value as an illustration of 
the myth is concealed. Whether intentionally or not, 
this novel, so far as the Jew appears in it, reproduces 
very nearly the spirit of an Arabian legend which 
belongs to the class discussed in this work. The story 
of Al Khedr will be found in the Koran (xviii.). It 
is said that Moses, having boasted of his knowledge, 
was told by God of one wiser than himself; and 
having found out this man (Al Khedr), he (Moses) 
journeyed with him. But the aged man had exacted 
from Moses a promise that he would not ask any 
question, whatever he might see. Al Khedr commits 
various crimes, and Moses cannot contain his indigna- 
tion. Al Khedr then reveals to him that each apparent 
wrong he had done was a retribution, or a blessing in 
disguise, telling him the story of each person who had 



214 THE WANDERING JEW. 

apparently suffered injustice. The Arabs have identi- 
fied Al Khedr with both Elias and St. George (who 
they say, recovered life after being thrice slain). The 
wisdom of Al Khedr therefore lies in his continuity of 
existence. He represents the primitive conception 
of a particular providence, seeing the end of events 
from the beginning. They who have perused the 
history of a single family whose records have been 
preserved for several generations, may sometimes feel, 
with Browning's Luria, 

" The only fault's with time : 
All men become good creatures — but so slow !" 

It takes the life of a family to round out and com- 
plete the events and incidents which its individual 
members often find so out of joint, and which have 
baffled the efforts of this or that generation to set 
them right. And since the general pressure of the 
aggregate members of the family, in all its genera- 
tions, is toward the better conditions, the tendency is 
such as to suggest a providential guidance by the 
Sleepless and Eternal. This is reflected in Al Khedr ; 
and the Eternal Jew of Eugene Sue is related to him. 
In the drama built of this novel, which I saw well per- 
formed recently as " All for Gold " in the Surrey 
Theatre, the tableaus of the Wanderer were quite im- 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN FRANCE. 215 

pressive. He appears on a peak of Arctic snow, with 
the Northern Light behind him ; his doom, as that of 
his race, was recalled in a certain reddish hue of beard 
and raiment, and he speaks of the children — who, seem- 
ing so helpless, are struggling successfully as uncon- 
sciously for their bequest with the hidden powers of 
Jesuitism — as representatives of a family which repre- 
sents the history of humanity. 

Wherever Ahasuerus moves he leaves the sign of 
the cross on his track — the last departing glimpse of 
the mark of Cain. Herodias, his fellow-sufferer, 
comes up to the Arctic region on the American side 
— a notable incident when it is remembered (see IX.), 
that her myth is mainly Spanish and survives 
chiefly in Spanish America. Eugene Sue brings both 
of the Wanderers to rest. Herodias enters the Abbey 
of " St. John the Beheaded ;" exhausted she sinks 
before his image. Weary, footsore, as she had never 
felt before, even when passing over fiery lava, sandy 
desert, or Arctic icefields, athirst, and in pain, she 
looks into a fountain and observes the traces of age 
in her features. Her youth, which had seemed end- 
less, has passed. Her expiation ends at the feet of 
the image of him her guilt had destroyed. She im- 
plores the forgiveness of God for Ahasuerus also. 
The Wandering Jew, meanwhile, has climbed Calvary 



216 THE WANDERING JEW. 

and sits down at the feet of an image of Jesus there. 
Suddenly he perceives that the face looks upon him 
as if it were alive, with gentleness and compassion. 
Ahasuerus prays and is pardoned. Ahasuerus and 
Herodias are finally seen together, under a shelter, 
at peace, awaiting longed-for and approaching 
death. 

In Ahasuerus, Sue represents the Workingman, an 
outcast from heaven under sentence of drudgery, 
finding at last release from oppression. Herodias is 
Woman, delivered at last from her political slavery. 

So, in their widely differing spheres, have Quinet 
and Eugene Sue given a nineteenth-century refrain to 
the seventeenth century song : 

" Mais toujours le soleil se leve, 
Toujours, toujours. 
Tourne la terre ou moi je cours, 
Toujours, toujours, toujours, toujours !" 

M. Pierre Dupont has written a poetical version 
of our legend to accompany G. Dore's designs (pub- 
lished by Michel Levy in 1856). But, as Champfleury 
says, the imaginatively created Jew of M. Dore, and 
the modernised narrative of M. Dupont, are very 
uninteresting compared with the rude pictures of the 
folk-books, and the quaint simplicity of the folk 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN FRANCE. 217 

ballads. The figure of the Wandering Jew which 
Kaulbach introduced into his picture of the siege of 
Jerusalem might, as a painting, be regarded as some- 
what related to the New Ahasuerus of the poets, but 
it is a subject that still invites artistic treatment. 
And how suggestive of artistic effects the legend is 
may be judged by the next and last French work to 
be considered here : La Mort du Juif-Errant. Par 
Edouard Grenier. 

This poem was first published, separately, in 1857, 
but afterwards included in its author's Petits Poemes> 
of which the fourth edition is before me. It is a 
beautiful and pathetic poem, and treats the story 
subjectively. The poet describes himself as having 
escaped from the haunts of men, and built a little 
hermitage far away in the mountain solitudes. One 
evening, when he had been watching the fading 
splendours of sunset, the signs of a storm appeared. 
The labourers had hastened homeward, the herds 
sought their shelter, the birds their nests. He then 
beheld a solitary wayfarer moving on, and asked him 
to enter, informing him that, in the direction he was 
going, he could reach no house until morning, and 
pointing to the increasing menaces of the storm. 
The traveller turned upon him a burning eye and said, 
"Thou knowest not the wayfarer whose steps thou 



218 THE WANDERING JEW. 

wouldst stay. Why, detained by thy request, should 
I enter with thee thy hospitable door, if my name, 
when pronounced, must freeze thy welcome, and 
force me to repass thy threshold ?" " Whatever thy 
name or lot, yet must this roof shelter thee this 
night." The Wanderer accepts. The poet draws a 
striking picture of his guest's strange and noble 
appearance. The traveller is shown a fountain where 
he may bathe ; a repast is then spread before him. 
Afterwards the poet inquires the name and country of 
his guest, who turns pale, and with a sigh answers, 
" I am called Ahasuerus ; I am the Wandering Jew." 
Seeing the poet's shudder, the Wanderer rises, thanks 
him for his hospitality, and says, " The cursed one 
blesses thee," then starts up to resume his journey. 
But the poet holds him. " It is not I who am charged 
with thy punishment." He forbids Ahasuerus to go 
out into the storm. The Wanderer says, " The beasts 
of the field and the birds of the air have their retreats 
from the rain and lightning, but the Proscribed One 
hath not where to lay his head." He heeds not the 
storm, but the voice which above it cries, " Still 
march! For thee alone neither repose nor death. 
March for ever ! The justice of God has not had its 
full course." But when the poet has detained him, 
and as they sit together, this harsh voice for the first 



<" 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN FRANCE. 219 

time is not heard. He asks if the divine justice can 
have become weary ? The poet bids him hope. The 
lamp is lit, and the poet entreats Ahasuerus to 
instruct his youth. He who has explored so many 
regions, seen so many peoples, traversed the earth — 
what a sublime destiny ! — can tell much to him who, 
bound to one little spot, can only dream of such far 
realms, which he has longed to see. Ahasuerus tells 
him the earth is so small, his desire would soon be 
calmed, could he explore it. Each corner of nature 
offers the universe as in miniature. With the blue 
heaven above, and a soul within, he may unite the 
image of the real with the infinite dream. Earth, air, 
heaven, man, are everywhere the same. But, the poet 
says, life is so short ; man does but begin to peruse 
the universe when death closes his eyes ; while for 
him — the Wanderer — length of days have opened the 
treasures of knowledge ; man, time, lands and ages, 
have no secrets for him. Ahasuerus bids the poet 
undeceive himself: each man receives in his mind 
what his forerunners have traced. " Step by step, 
day by day, century by century, along with humanity, 
I have wearily climbed the painful ladder on whose 
last rung God has placed thee." They have journeyed 
the same road, but he — the Wanderer — as a pioneer, 
has had to travel for a^es on foot, over stones, the 



4 

22o THE WANDERING JEW. 

course which the man of the present passes in his 
chariot in a day. 

In the third canto the Wanderer gives the poet an 
account of his wanderings. At first he had not be- 
lieved in his doom ; then, when he began to contem- 
plate the possibility of it, he entered into all manncr 
of dissipation to forget himself. Finally, in the 
mournful Valley of Jehoshaphat, he turned upon the 
pursuing phantom and faced it. " Is it then such a 
terrible thing to live for ever? What have I lost? 
Death. What everybody is trying to do ! Are not 
all aiming to live eternally as God in heaven ?" He is 
elated at his prospect ; he will have glory, gold, bend 
nations under his sceptre. Perhaps he will be the 
Messiah himself! 

But the Wanderer's wife, passionately loved, slowly 
parts from his heart, withers of age, and dies in his 
young arms. The torture of that gradual decay of 
the one he loved is portrayed. His sons, as they 
grow in years, dread him, hate him, try to poison him ; 
and then leave him in horror or remorse for other 
lands. Of his family one alone remains, a beloved 
son. But this last child's heart even grows cold to 
him. Its life sinks ; its colour departs ; its face be- 
comes thin, corpse-like. O horror ! he sees before 
him, in the dying child, the very face of Jesus, whom 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN FRANCE. 221 

he had insulted ! The child dies on the day and hour 
of the anniversary of Christ's death. 

After many wanderings Ahasuerus finds himself in 
the Colosseum at Rome, there seated in the moon- 
light. He had seen that great edifice built by Jews, 
stone by stone, while their own beloved Jerusalem fell 
to dust. As in the great Roman ruin he is medi- 
tating upon the vicissitudes he has witnessed, the 
Angdus sounds forth ; the stars, the dew, all nature 
started in chorus, and said, " Repent !" He looks 
upon the crucifix amid that circle — triumphantly 
raised there, where he had seen Christians torn by 
lions. As he was looking upon that figure a well- 
remembered voice came to him from it, "Why fly 
from me ? Thy sole refuge is in my love." Then he 
there knelt, crying, " O Christ ! thou hast conquered 
me !" Then his first relief came in tears, and an in- 
effable peace descended in his heart. From that time 
he did not suffer as one disinherited ; he even felt a 
delicious pain in his expiation ; he lived, suffered and 
loved along with humanity. He now comprehended 
the enormity of his crime, which God had pursued so 
relentlessly : it was not his insult to Divinity, but his 
lese-humanity. He now felt that he might hope that 
his expiation would be complete, and in the last day 
he would find repose in the love of Christ. 



222 THE WANDERING JEW. 

In the fifth and last Canto the poet entreats the 
Wanderer to give him a description of Jesus person- 
ally, of whom he has so long dreamed — his look, 
manner, voice. When he has ended this appeal there 
is a knock at his door, and a stranger enters. Ahasu- 
erus at once recognises him, and kneels, clasping his 
feet and bathing them with his tears. Jesus says to 
him, " Friend ! weep no more ! Since thy touched 
heart comprehends its sin and washes it away in 
tears ; since the man outraged by thee as much as 
the God is now thy brother ; since thy heart loves, I 
bring pardon, the reward of repentance. Be happy ! 
Now, thou canst at last die." 

In the morning a shepherd coming to the poet's 
hermitage found two forms lying prostrate, both appa- 
rently dead. The poet was slowly brought to life, 
but Ahasuerus was dead. On his face was a smile of 
celestial sweetness and calm felicity. On a bier made 
of larches the poet and the shepherd bore the dead 
body of the Wanderer to its place of rest. They 
bore it to the summit of the highest mountain. Be- 
yond the trees they passed, beyond the bushes, and 
where the grass became scant. Into a cloud they 
entered, upward and onward bore him, till they came 
to the blue foot of a glacier. On a little couch of 
moss they laid the body while the)* dug a grave ; as 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN FRANCE. 223 

they covered the Wanderer's form their last vision 
was of the smile still shining, or even happier, upon 
his face. 

" Ce vieux corps, fatigue par vingt siecles d'effbrt, 
Goutait encore mieux le bienfait de la mort. 
Et e'est la qu'il repose, inconnu, solitaire, 
Perdu dans la nuee au-dessus de la terre ! 
Nul monument funebre attirant le regard, 
Ne revele sa tombe au pas du montagnard. 
Le glacier qui defend cette gorge isolee 
En est le seul gardien et le seul mausolee. 
Nulle Spouse, nul fils n'y sanglote sur lui, 
Et la seul rosee y vient pleurer la nuit. 
Nul mortel ne connait sa demeure derniere, 
Personne, excepte moi, n'y versa de priere, 
Et seul l'aigle se pose a la cime ou ses os 
Savourent dans mort un eternel repos. 

It is interesting to contrast this peaceful end of 
Grenier's Ahasuerus with the invincible Wanderer of 
Shelley. Nevertheless, the Ahasuerus of this poem 
yields only to a tender appeal from Christ — himself 
the bound victim of an eternal curse. Another poem 
may yet be written which shall show Jesus not to 
have pronounced the doom upon the poor shoemaker, 
but to have known so much of Jahve's vindictive dis- 
position as to foretell it, and ultimately coming to an 
understanding with xA.hasuerus as the fellow-victim of 
an eternal curse. They might be shown buried to- 



224 THE WANDERING JEW. 

gether by the compassionate poet and shepherd where 
the foiled eagle of Jove, surviving from its feast orr 
Prometheus, could not reach them, and the glacier- 
heart of deified power could freeze and crush them no 
more. This, for one of the two, would be a happier 
fate than survival in the satirical song still sung in 
France — 

" Jdsus la bontc meme 

Lui dit en soupirant, 

Tu marcheras toi-meme 

Au moins pour trois milles ans, 

Tu finiras tes peines 

Au dernier jugement." 



< 



XVII. 

THE NEW AHASUERUS IN ENGLAND. 

The old Ahasuerus had his day in England. While 
he was personally wandering about the world, how- 
ever, in the guise of the pious pretender, pouring his 
cant into every long ear he could find, clever English 
writers began to utilise him. The earliest work (1640), 
The Wandering Jew telling For times to Englishmen, 
was a fair satire upon some features of London in 
that time. The name of the Jew is Gad Ben-Arod 
Ben-Balaam Ben-Alimoth Ben-Baal Ben-Gog Ben- 
Magog. The next work that followed (1797) was an 
amusing drama. It is entitled The Wandering Jew y 
or Love's Masquerade, by Andrew Franklin. A surly 
old guardian, disgusted with the young beaux seeking 
his ward's hand, has vowed that he will give her to 
the most aged man to be found in England. The 
lover most favoured by the young lady conspires with 

15 



2 26 THE WANDERING JEW. 

her to have an announcement of the presence of the 
Wandering Jew in London, and then presents himself 
in that disguise as Mr. Mathusalem. He is attended 
by his equally aged servant, Juba, in whose anachron- 
isms the fun mainly consists. Juba, despite all 
efforts on Mr. Mathusalem's part to make him more 
reticent, is voluminous in his reminiscences ; among 
other things, he tells about Romulus and Remus, and 
relates that, when he was at the baptism of the twins, 
their mother threw a basin of tea at him for saying 
that Remus was the prettier of the two. < 
->In 1799 appeared the novel St. Leon] by William 
Godwin. It is not a very interesting work now, what- 
ever it may have been at the time. The plot of it is, 
that a gentleman, who, through gambling, has sunk 
into poverty and plunged his family in distress, 
obtains from an uncanny old man the secret of re- 
covering youth and obtaining money whenever he 
needs it. But he has vowed secrecy. He returns to 
his family, but is not recognised. He is cut off from 
the old sympathies. The novel speedily carries 
interest away from St. Leon to other persons, and 
ends without any account of his end, nor does it even 
carry St. Leon beyond the lives of his children. The 
romance might have been suggested by any traditional 
type of longevity, such as the Hindu Dnyaneshvar, 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN ENGLAND. 227 

found in his tomb reading his Commentaries 300 
years after apparent death ; or Artesius, the Arabian 
alchemist, said to have, by his art, prolonged his life 
1025 years, or Alkazwini, who also lived praeter- 
naturalis' long. The preface, however, contains an 
interesting citation, which gives its actual origin : — 
"The following passage from a work, said to be 
written by the late Dr. J ohn Campbel, and entitled 
Hermippus Rcdivivus, suggested the first hint of the 
present performance : ' There happened in the year 
1687 an odd accident at Venice, that made a very 
great stir then, and which I think deserves to be 
rescued from oblivion. The great freedom and ease 
with which all persons who make a good appearance 
live in that city is known sufficiently to all who are 
acquainted with it ; such will not, therefore, be sur- 
prised that a stranger, who went by the name of 
Signor Gualdi, and who made a considerable figure 
there, was admitted into the best company, though 
nobody knew who or what he was. He remained at 
Venice for some months, and three things were re- 
marked in his conduct. The first was, that he had a 
small collection of fine pictures, which he readily 
showed to anybody that desired it ; the next, that he 
was perfectly versed in all arts and sciences, and spoke 
on every subject with such readiness and sagacity as 

15—2 



228 THE WANDERING JEW. 

astonished all who heard him ; and it was, in the third 
place, observed that he never wrote or received any 
letter, never desired any credit, or made use of bills of 
exchange ; but paid for everything in ready money, 
and lived decently, though not in splendour. 

" ' This gentleman met one day at the coffee-house 
with a Venetian nobleman, who was an extraordinary 
good judge of pictures ; he had heard of Signor 
Gualdi's collection, and in a very polite manner de- 
sired to see them, to which the other very readily 
consented. After the Venetian had viewed Signor 
Gualdi's collection, and expressed his satisfaction by 
telling him he had never seen a finer, considering the * 
number of pieces of which it consisted — he cast his 
eye by chance over the chamber-door, where hung a 
picture of this stranger. The Venetian looked upon 
it, and then upon him. " This picture was drawn for 
you, sir," says he to Signor Gualdi, to which the other 
made no answer but by a low bow. " You look," con- 
tinued the Venetian, " like a man of fifty, and yet I 
know this picture to be of the hand of Titian, who has 
been dead one hundred and thirty years. How is this 
possible?" "It is not easy," said Signor Gualdi 
gravely, " to know all things that are possible ; but 
there is certainly no crime in my being like a picture 
drawn by Titian." The Venetian easily perceived, by 



THE NE IF AHA SUER US IN ENGL A ND. 2 2 9 

his manner of speaking, that he had given the stranger 
offence, and therefore took his leave. He could not 
forbear speaking of this in the evening to some of his 
friends, who resolved to satisfy themselves by looking 
upon the picture the next day. In order to have an 
opportunity of doing so, they went to the coffee-house 
about the time that Signor Gualdi was wont to come 
thither ; and not meeting him, one of them, who had 
often conversed with him, went to his lodgings to in- 
quire after him, when he heard that he had set out 
an hour before for Vienna. This affair made a great 
noise, and found a place in all the newspapers of that 
time.' " 

It is probable that not only Si. Leon, but the 
Bassevittiana of Vincenzo Monti had influence in 
exciting the English imagination with legends of this 
character. A translation of this Italian poem, by the 
Rev. Henry Boyd, was published in London in 1805. 
It is the story of a " Soul's Doom," founded on the 
murder of the French minister, Basseville, in Rome, 
near the end of the last century. The soul of Basse- 
ville is condemned to wander over the French pro- 
vinces, and behold the desolations caused by the 
revolution and its retributions. The Spirit of the 
Abyss is forbidden fo clutch Basseville. An angel 
says to the soul : 



230 THE WANDERING JEW. 

u Fear not ; thou art not doomed to sip the wave 
Of black Avernus, which who tastes, resigned 

All hope of change, becomes the demon's slave ; 
But Heaven's high justice, nor in mercy blind, 

Nor in security scrupulous to guage 
Each blot, each wrinkle, of the human mind, 

Has written on the adamantine page, 
That thou no joys of paradise mayst know, 
Till punished be of France the guilty rage." 

Both St. Leon and " The Soul's Doom " might have 
been read by those comrades in distress, Shelley and 
Medwin, for whom seventy years ago Oxford Christi- 
anity, and homes inspired by it, had nothing better 
than wanderings about London under a curse. They 
took up the subject, Medwin says, when Shelley 
was fifteen. Of the poem, as it now stands, in the 
edition of Chatto and Windus, Shelley wrote but a 
few lines ; but I think that amidst its rhapsodical 
rubbish a scholarly expression or illustration may 
here and there be found traceable to Shelley. There 
is evidence of Shelley's divining-rod in the allusions 
to some of the more significant legends concerning 
Ahasuerus which had attracted the attention of 
several German poets. There is in the opening some 
resemblance to the scene in Southey's Curse of 
Kehama. Where, in the latter, the young Hindu 
woman is brought forward to perish on the funeral- 
pyre, in Shelley's poem a sinning novice is dragged to 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN ENGLAND. 231 

the " fatal shrine," from which she is rescued by the 
mysterious traveller. This horseman, hastening to 
Padua, 

(i Wraps his mantle around his brow, 
As if to hide his woes." 

In his tale, he says : 

" A burning cross illumed my brow, 
I hid it with a fillet grey." 

This Cross enables him to command fiends. To 
Paulo, who has rescued her, Rosa the novice has 
given herself. Victorio, her lover, summons a witch- 
demon, and to her consigns his soul to obtain a philtre 
which will secure Rosa's love. But when he has 
administered it she dies. 

Is the resemblance mentioned between this 
Wandering Jew and the Curse of Keha ma accidental? 
The Medwin-Shelley poem was unable to reach the 
light for which it struggled in 18 10. It was pub- 
lished in Frazer's Magazine in 1831. But soon after 
it was written, Shelley shows great eagerness to get 
Southey's poem, which had been announced, and 
twice writes to the bookseller, Stockdale, for it in 
December, 18 10. In 18 12, while at Keswick with his 
young wife, Shelley made the acquaintance of Southey, 



232 THE WANDERING JEW. 

if not before. In the poem of Southey, the young 
Indian casts down the idol before which the woman 
is about to be burned, which corresponds to the blow 
given to Christ by Ahasuerus. The curse is artificially 
modified, and may have been suggested by the 
sentence on Cain, " Behold now art thou cursed from 
the earth." The doom on the iconoclast is that on 
him shall fall neither the rain nor the sunshine, nor 
any of the influences of nature. 

There would seem to be little doubt that St. Leon 
inspired Shelley's St. Irvyne, the Rosicrucian, or rather 
Ginotti, with his elixir of life, whose only " survival " 
is in Bulwer's Zanoni. The " gigantic Ginotti " dies 
through the wicked Wolfstein ; but Shelley was 
particular in- pointing out that " he did not die by 
Wolfstein's hand, but by the influence of that natural 
magic which, when the secret was imparted to the 
latter, destroyed him." The longevity is here not a 
doom. But once, as Shelley was walking through 
Lincoln's Inn Fields, he picked up a " dirty and torn " 
work, which contained Schubart's " Rhapsody " of 
Ahasuerus, elsewhere mentioned. Hogg was quite 
mistaken in affirming that Shelley's account was an 
invention. Full information on this point may be 
found in Rossetti's Shelley (vol.i. p. 434). The German 
poem had appeared in a magazine called the German 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN ENGLAND. 233 

Museum, in 1802. The Wandering Jew thus became 
a type in Shelley's mind, and repeatedly appears in 
his works. In Aiastor he uses the Wanderer as an 

illustration. r ^ 

" Oh that God, 
Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice 
Which but one living man has drained, who now, 
Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels 
No proud exemption in the blighting curse 
He bears, over the world wanders for ever, 
Lone as incarnate death !" 

It is, however, in Queen Mab that we find the real 
form which arose before Shelley out of Schubart's 
small casket, fished up from the muddy ocean of 
London. Schubart's Ahasuerus whines and is par- 
doned. Shelley's Ahasuerus is a Titan, who prefers 
the sharp vulture-beak and the chain to any surrender 
to the Christian Jove. Believing as I do that Cain 
was originally a Semitic Prometheus, — as first of those 
who began removal of Jahve's curse on the earth by 
agriculture and working in metals, — I find it remark- 
able that Shelley, outcast from college and home in 
early youth because of his atheism, should recognise 
this feature in the distant successor of Cain. 

" A strange and woe-worn wight, 
Arose beside the battlements, 

And stood unmoving there : 
His inessential figure cast no shade 



234 THE WANDERING JEW. 

Upon the golden floor ; 
His port and mien bore mark of many years, 

And chronicles of untold ancientness 

Were legible within his beamless eye : 
Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth ; 
Freshness and vigour knit his manly frame ; 
The wisdom of old age was mingled there 

With youth's primeval dauntlessness ; 
And inexpressible woe, 
Chastened by fearless resignation, gave 
An awful grace to his all-speaking brow. 

Spirit. — Is there a God ? 

Ahasuerus. — Is there a God ! — ay, an Almighty God, 
And vengeful as almighty ! Once his voice 
Was heard on earth : earth shudder'd at the sound ; 
The fiery-visaged firmament expressed 
Abhorrence, and the grave of nature yawn'd, 
To swallow all the dauntless and the good, 
That dared to hurl defiance at his throne, 
Girt as it was with power. None but slaves 
Survived — cold-blooded slaves, who did the work 
Of tyrannous Omnipotence ; whose souls 
No honest indignation ever urged 
To elevated daring, to one deed 
Which gross and sensual self did not pollute. 
These slaves built temples for the omnipotent fiend, 
Gorgeous and vast : the costly altars smoked 
With human blood, and hideous paeans rang, 
Through all the long-drawn aisles. 

* . * * * * 

" O Spirit ! centuries have set their seal, 
On this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain, 
Since the Incarnate came : humbly he came, 
Veiling his horrible godhead 
In the shape of man ; scorn'd by the world, his name unheard, 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN ENGLAND. 

Save by the rabble of his native town, 

Even as a parish demagogue. He led 

The crowd ; he taught them justice, truth, and peace, 

In semblance ; but he lit within their souls 

The quenchless flame of zeal, and blest the sword 

He brought on earth, to satiate with the blood 

Of truth and freedom his malignant soul 

At length his mortal frame was led to death. 

I stood beside him : on the torturing cross 

No pain assailed his unterrestrial sense ; 

And yet he groaned. Indignantly I summ'd 

The massacres and miseries which his name 

Had sanction'd in my country, and I cried, 

' Go ! go !' in mockery. 

A smile of godlike malice reillumined 

His fading lineaments, — ' I go,' he cried, 

' But thou shalt wander o'er the unquiet earth, 

Eternally.' — The dampness of the grave, 

Bathed my imperishable front. I fell, 

And long lay tranced upon the charmed soil. 

When I awoke hell burned within my brain, 

Which stagger'd on its seat ; for all around 

The mouldering relics of my kindred lay, 

Even as the Almighty's ire arrested them, 

And in their various attitudes of death, 

My murderM children's mute and eyeless skulls, 

Glared ghastlily upon me. 

But my soul, 
From sight and sense of the polluting woe 
Of tyranny, had long learn'd to prefer 
Hell's freedom to the servitude of heaven. 
Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly began 
My lonely and unending pilgrimage, 
Resolved to wage unweariable war 
With my almighty tyrant, and to hurl 



-3$ THE WANDERING JEW. 

Defiance at his impotence to harm, 

Beyond the curse I bore. The very hand 

That barr'd my passage to the peaceful grave 

Has crush'd the earth to misery, and given 

Its empire to the chosen of his slaves. 

* * 

"■ * ■* 

" Thus have I stood-through a wild waste of years 

Struggling with whirlwinds of mad agony, 

Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined 

Mocking my powerless tyrant's horrible curs'e 

With stubborn and unalterable will • 

Even as the giant oak, which heaven's fierce flame* 

Had scathed in the wilderness, to stand 

A monument of fadeless ruin there ; 

Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves 

The midnight conflict of the wintry storm, 

As in the sunlight's calm it spreads 

Its worn and wither'd arms on high, 

To meet the quiet of a summer's morn. 

The Fairy waved her hand : 

Ahasuerus fled 
Fast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist, 
That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove, 

Flee from the morning beam : 
The matter of which dreams are made 
Not more endowed with actual life 
Than this phantasmal portraiture 
Of wandering human thought." 

This Ahasuerus is not only the fellow Titan of Pro- 
metheus, but he is the New Ahasuerus-Prometheus 

who had his fire to bring and his doom to suffer in 
England. The events of Shelley's life between 1S12, 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN ENGLAND. 257 

when he probably wrote this part of Queen Mad, and 
the latter part of 18 14, added new curses to the 
eternal wanderings of the Jew. These appear in that 
sufficiently wild fragment entitled The Assassins, 
written in Switzerland, 18 14, from which the subjoined 
passage is selected : 

" A young man named Albedir, wandering in the 
woods, was startled by the screaming of a bird of prey, 
and, looking up, saw blood fall, drop by drop, from 
among the intertwined boughs of a cedar. Having 
climbed the tree, he beheld a terrible and dismaying 
spectacle. A naked human body was impaled on the 
broken branch. It was maimed and mangled horribly 
—every limb bent and bruised into frightful distortion, 
and exhibiting a breathing image of the most sicken- 
ing mockery of life. A monstrous snake had scented 
its prey from among the mountains — and above 
hovered a hungry vulture. From amidst the mass of 
desolated humanity two eyes, black and excessively 
brilliant, shone with an unearthly lustre. Beneath the 
blood-stained eyebrows their steady rays manifested 
the serenity of an immortal power, the collected 
energy of a deathless mind, spell-secured from dis- 
solution. A bitter smile of mingled abhorrence 
and scorn distorted his wounded lip — he appeared 
calmly to observe and measure all around — self- 



238 THE WANDERING JEW. 

possession had not deserted the shattered mass of 
life. 

" The youth approached the bough on which the 
breathing corpse was hung. As he approached, the 
serpent reluctantly unwreathed his glittering coils, 
and crept towards his dark and loathsome cave. The 
vulture, impatient of his meal, fled to the mountain, 
that re-echoed with his hoarse screams. The cedar- 
branches creaked with their agitating weight, faintly, 
as the dismal wind arose. All else was deadly 
silent. 

" At length a voice issued from the mangled man. 
It rattled in hoarse murmurs from his throat and lungs 
— his words were the conclusion of some strange, 
mysterious soliloquy. They were broken and without 
apparent connection, completing wide intervals of 
inexpressible conceptions. 

" ' The great tyrant is baffled, even in success. Joy, 
joy to his tortured foe ! Triumph to the worm which 
he tramples under his feet ! Ha ! his suicidal hand 
might dare as well abolish the mighty frame of things ! 
Delight and exultation sit before the closed gates of 
death ! I fear not to dwell beneath their black and 
ghastly shadow. Here thy power may not avail ! 
Thou createst — 'tis mine to ruin and destroy. I was 
thy slave — I am thy equal, and thy foe. Thousands 



^ THE NEW AHASUERUS IN ENGLAND. 239 

tremble before thy throne, who, at my voice, shall dare 
to pluck the golden crown from thy unholy head.' 
He ceased. The silence of noon swallowed up his 
words. Albedir clung tighter to the tree — he dared 
not for dismay remove his eyes. He remained mute 
in the perturbation of mute and creeping horror. 

"'Albedir,' said the same voice — 'Albedir, in the 
name of God, approach ! He that suffered me to fall 
watches thee. The gentle and merciful spirits of sweet 
human love delight not in agony and horror. For 
pity's sake, approach ! In the name of thy good God, 
approach, Albedir !' The tones were mild and clear 
as the responses of /Eolian music. They floated to 
Albedir's ear like the warm breath of June that lingers 
in the lawny groves, subduing all to softness. Tears 
of tender affection started into his eyes." 

The " Assassins " are something like Schiller's 
" Robbers," outlaws better than the laws that have 
branded them. In Hellas, Ahasuerus, though still 
appropriately responding to a summons from the 
Moslem Antichrist, is an impersonation of human 
thought as raised by long experience to a prophetic 
power. The idea is substantially the same as that 
which we have seen underlying the myths of Enoch 
I and Teiresias, while it goes beyond them in its sug- 
gestion that knowledge, living over the ages past, and 



240 THE WANDERING JEW. 

imagination attaining to the farthest outcome of pre- 
sent tendencies, can make for the being of a day an 
eternal existence. Ahasuerus says to Mahmud : 

"All is contained in each. 
Dodona's forest to an acorn's cup 
Is that which has been, or will be, to that 
Which is — the absent to the present. Thought 
Alone, and its quick elements, Will, Passion, 
Reason, Imagination, cannot die ; 
They are, what that which they regard appears, 
The stuff whence mutability can weave 
All that it hath dominion o'er, worlds, worms, 
Empires, and superstitions." 

With true Shelleyan felicity Hassan describes this 
Jew— s* 

"From his eye looks forth 
A life of unconsumed thought which pierces 
The present, and the past, and the to come . . . 
Some feign that he is Enoch." 

In the year 1820 appeared the novel in four 
volumes, Melmoth, the Wanderer^ by the Rev. Robert 
Charles Maturin, author also of Bertram, a respect- 
able play, and several novels. Melmoth is a man 
who has sold himself to Satan for the advantage of 
a vast length of life, to which is added a power of 
passing instantaneously, at will, from place to place. 
The terms of his bond are that he may escape the 
final doom of his soul, which is to pay for these 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN ENGLAND. 241 

advantages, provided he can find anyone willing to 
take the contract, with its benefits and penalty, off 
his hands. The author's purpose appears to be to 
show that no one would deliberately damn himself to 
all eternity for any temporal advantage ; though this 
would seem to be rather " Irish," since his hero is just 
that man. However, the hero is an exception that 
proves the rule, for he goes about the world vainly 
tempting the poor and needy to take his place. 
Even a beautiful Indian maiden, who has fallen 
desperately in love with him, will not surrender her 
soul. Failing with all, he is carried off by the Devil. 
The supposed date of this catastrophe is toward the 
close of the eighteenth century. 

The next work to be noticed at this point, and one 
which the perusal of Shelley may have suggested, is 
more distinctly based upon the legend pf the 
Wandering Jew ; this is the Rev. George Croly's 
Salathiel: A Story of the Past, the P * resent \ and the 
Future. This novel, in three volumes, appeared 
anonymously in 1828. The spirit in which the 
legend is treated in this work will sufficiently appear 
by the following passages : 

" Every sterner passion that disturbs our nature 
was to rule in successive tyranny over my soul. 

" Fearfully was the decree fulfilled. 

16 



242 THE WANDERING JEW. 

"In revenge for the fall of Jerusalem, I traversed 
the country to seek out an enemy of Rome. I found 
in the Northern snows a man of blood : I stirred up 
the soul of Alaric and led him to the sack of Rome. 

" In revenge for the insults heaped upon the Jew 
by the dotards and dastards of the city of Con- 
stantine, I sought out an, instrument of compendious 
ruin : I found him in the Arabian sands, and poured 
ambition into the soul of the enthusiast of Mecca. 

" In revenge for the pollution of the ruins of the 
Temple, I roused the iron tribes of the West, and at 
the head of the Crusaders, expelled the Saracens. I 
fed full on revenge, and I felt the misery of revenge ! 

" A passion for the mysteries of nature seized me. 
I talked with the Alchemist. I wore away years in 
the perplexities of the schoolmen ; and I felt the 
guilt and emptiness of unlawful knowledge. 

"A passion for human fame seized me. A passion 
for gold ! . . . 

" I found a bold Genoese. I led him to discover 
the New World ; with its metals I inundated the 
Old ; and to my own misery added the misery of twe 
hemispheres." 

At length the eternal World-wanderer stands be- 
side the newly discovered Printing Press ; again he 
pays homage to Luther at his rise, and he attains 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN ENGLAND. 243 

faith in the progress of mankind. "At this hour 
I see the dawn of things to whose glory the glory of 
the Past is but a dream !" 

Quite another Ahasuerus than Shelley's is repre- 
sented in Wordsworth's " Song of the Wandering 
Jew? which somewhat resembles the idea of Miiller, 
already quoted, as indeed both do the old saying, 
" The foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, 
but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." 

" Though the torrents from their fountains 
Roar down many a craggy steep, 
Yet they find among the mountains 
Resting-places calm and deep. 

" Clouds that love through air to hasten, 
Ere the storm its fury stills, 
Helmet-like themselves will fasten 
On the heads of towering hills. 

"What if through the frozen centre 
Of the Alps the chamois bound, 
Yet he has a home to enter 

In some nook of chosen ground. 

" If on windy days the raven 
Gambol like a dancing skiff, 
Not the less she loves her haven 
In the bosom of the cliff. 

" Though the sea-horse in the ocean 
Own no dear domestic cave, 
Yet he slumbers — by the motion 
Rocked of many a gentle wave. 

1 6 — 2 



244 THE WANDERING JEW. 

" The fleet ostrich, till day closes, 

Vagrant over desert sands, 

Brooding on her eggs reposes 

When chill night that care demands. 

" Day and night my toils redouble, 
Never nearer to the goal ; 
Night and day, I feel the trouble 
Of the Wanderer in my soul." 

It would be interesting to know at just what period 
of his life, or in which of his two lives, Wordsworth 
wrote this " Song." Was it a memory of his dead 
self, the radical that fell in the French Revolution ? 
Or did he write it when the sceptical wanderings of 
other minds around him had become to his peaceful 
soul, with no doom heavier than the liturgical round 
of Grasmere Church, as imaginary as the " seven 
whistlers on their nightly rounds," which his peasant- 
friend heard, while overhead were heard those 
" Gabriel's hounds" by ears that little knew they too 
were fabled of Jews doomed by the Crucified ? All 
around Wordsworth in his home amid the Lakes 
were the real wanderers. Before nearly every fine 
mind living at the beginning of the last generation, 
this Ahasuerus had risen as a spiritual type. Seven 
times did Shelley evoke this form, and it was with 
him when he wandered unrecognised past Rydal 
Mount. Southey had known the meaning of it. 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN ENGLAND. 245 

Byron had taken the side of Cain against him who in 
Paradise permitted "the Serpent to creep in," and 
seen in Prometheus, with " the wretched gift Eternity," 
the symbol of man's fate and force. De Quincey 
had made acquaintance with such doomed wanderers 
of rabbinical legend as " The Widow of Hebron." 
From afar the sighings of "L. E. L." were heard in 
fitful dreams of " The Undying One." 
'HCThere came a terrible day when the children of the / 
Revolution recognised the inexorable Mother of 
whom they were born. The old beliefs and ideas 
in which good and honest people had lived so com- 
fortably were shrivelled up. It was not the half-way 
heresy of the earlier time which believed it was 
attaining a purer Christianity and a more glorious 
immortality. /These children of the Revolution 
found the whole fabric of faith fallen to black 
ruins. The youth went off light-hearted to college : 
he came back heavy-hearted. Beside the old fire- 
side he sat once more, with the dear faces around 
him and exile in his heart. He listened to the old 
Bible, and knelt ; but his mind was far away, and 
had left him amid the innocent, a guilty, kneeling, 
assenting phantasm. Then there began this Age of 
Wandering ; for the new mind could not yet get a 
new heart, and could only wander about like the night- 



246 THE WANDERING JEW. 

raven of folk-lore, that ever seeks the Holy Sepulchre 
for rest. Their voices may be heard in most of the 
literature of the last generation, pathetic as the 
appeal of deserted brides going about the street asking, 
" Saw ye my Beloved ?" — the only answer being end- 
less echoes of the question. Intellect seemed to them 
a curse. By it they were at one stroke deprived alike 
of faith in future and hope of present joys. Unfit for 
usual avocations, unable to enter pulpits and pro- 
fessions tainted with the discredited superstitions, 
how well could they understand the doom of every 
wanderer ! 

In the same year (1833) that Edgar Quinet — after 
ten years of wandering in the effort to find some point 
where he could catch a least ray of the old faith 
that made his early home so sweet, only to discover 
that his faith was gone out, not eclipsed — published 
his AJiasnerus, Carlyle also, after like wanderings, 
published his Sartor Resartus, with its story of 
the " Sorrows of Teufelsdrockh." It was in that 
same year, too, that Ralph Waldo Emerson, un- 
able to rest even in his Unitarian pulpit, escaping 
from the clinging arms of his devoted congregation, 
came across the ocean to converse with Carlyle, Cole- 
ridge, and Wordsworth, and find if they could show 
him any light on the great problems. Coleridge had 



THE NEW AHASUERUS IN ENGLAND. 247 

taken refuge with opium and orthodoxy. Words- 
worth entertained the young American Wanderer 
with lamentations over the excess of intellectual 
above moral culture in the modern world. But it was 
in the far solitude of Nithsdale that he hoped to find 
what he sought ; for Carlyle had written an essay in 
which he spoke of standing amid night, yet seeing 
the faint signs of a new day-spring. " Here, straight 
uprose that lone wayfaring man," wrote Carlyle after- 
wards ; but, alas, it was only to find at Craigenput- 
toch (Hawk Hill) one preyed upon by the same 
remorseless doubts. The personal hospitality was 
beautiful. But when the young American, just be- 
reaved of his wife, sought some vision beyond the 
grave, there was no help for him. He asked Carlyle 
to what religious development those sentences about 
a new day-spring pointed ? The answer was that he 
could not state that even to himself. Everyone, he 
said, must find out his own path, and walk in it. 

When Emerson parted from Carlyle and returned to 
the New World, he found in its new life more than 
his vanished faith : to emancipate slaves, and human 
minds, and the moral genius of woman, and give the 
People their opportunity to build the New World into 
beauty and happiness — this he found was a religion 
with eternal vistas opening from it, hopes fairer than 



248 THE WANDERING JEW. 

his faded heaven, a providence better than the Syrian 
deity who had led the Old World into Red Seas, but 
never through them to any Promised Land. But 
Carlyle remained to wander to the last amid the 
wrecks of his lost worlds. 

" Poor Teufelsdrockh ! Flying with Hunger always 
parallel to him, and a whole Infernal Chase in his 
rear ; so that the. countenance of Hunger is compara- 
tively a friend's ! Thus must he, in the temper of 
ancient Cain, or of the modern Wandering Jew, save 
only that he feels himself not guilty and but suffering 
the pains of guilt — wend to and fro with aimless 
speed. Thus must he, over the whole surface of the 
earth (by footprints) write his Sorrows of Teufels- 
drockh ; even as the great Goethe, in passionate words, 
must write his Sorrows of Werther, before the spirit 
freed itself and he could become a Man. Vain, truly, 
is the hope of your swiftest runner to escape from 
his own shadow !" 

L Among all the Wanderers only one seemed to have 



• 



found a new heart atwin with his new intellect — he 
alone loved and welcomed the new, and preferred the 
vulture-beak that tears Prometheus, the loneliness of 
Ahasuerus, to the favour of Jove, Jahve or Jesus. 
Shelley alone was heard singing his matin of the 
lark above ruins sadder than all the rest. 



XVIII. 

AHASUERUS VINCTUS. 

Here before me is a formidable array of large — one 
might almost say fat — volumes, which I have hardly 
known whether to assign to England or Germany, but 
; conclude that they belong to both, and also to America, 
j^and to the night-side of Protestantism everywhere. 
They are entitled : Chronicles, selected fro?n the 
originals, of Cartaphilus, the Wandering Jew, em- 
bracing a period of nearly XIX. centuries. Now first 
revealed to and edited by David Hoffman, Hon. J. U. D. 
of Gottingen. In tivo series, each of three volumes. 
London: Thomas Boszcorth, 1853. This book contains 
I a dedication, dated March 10, 185 1, Upper Brook 
Street, Grosvenor Square, to the author's brother, 
Samuel Hoffman, Esq., of Baltimore, U. S. A. It 
contains also a dedication, dated September, 1852, 
Austin Friars, London, from Cartaphilus himself: 
" To the Children of the Dispersion — Jehovah's 



25o THE WANDERING JEW. 

favoured people during so many ages, Christ's scat- 
tered flock during so many more — these chronicles 
are affectionately inscribed," etc. 

There is nothing in these volumes which bear upon 
the legendary Wandering Jew, except a tradition, in- 
cidentally mentioned, that in 1539 he visited Cornelius 
Agrippa, and was shown the face of Rebecca, whom 
he had loved fifteen centuries before, in a magic mirror. 
But the existence of such a book, embodying the 
vulgar Protestant superstitions about the " dispersion " 
and the gathering of the " chosen people ;" the fact 
that so much labour can be expended on these 
notions by a man otherwise educated, the author 
apparently of several legal works, are phenomena to 
excite reflections. There is a good deal of suggestive- 
ness, too, in the link between Austin Friars and Gros- 
venor Square. Cartaphilus, going his eternal round 
with cry of " O' clo' !" has finally, it would appear, dis- 
covered that he need only have his Judaism baptized 
to be one of " Christ's flock," pastured as richly in the 
fashionable Square. 

But even more significant just now is the fact that 
Germany is ready to supply the hand that can write 
of the Jews as for ages " Jehovah's favoured people," 
and in the next moment be clenched to smite them as 
an accursed race. So much this union of Cartaphilus 



AHASUERUS VINCTUS. 251 

and Austin Friars with the Hon. Mr. Hoffman and 
Grosvenor Square may mean for us, as we bid them 
farewell, finding nothing further in their voluminous 
sermons pertinent to our present inquiry or pur- 
pose. 

Here are two pregnant facts. In various parts of 
the East Jews manifest a superstitious dread of a 
Christian's curse. On the other hand, for a long time 
there prevailed among Christians a belief that an oath 
taken in a Jewish synagogue was more binding and 
efficient than one taken elsewhere.* Add these two 
facts together, and their sum is in the following third 
fact: on Wednesday, April 13, 1881. a petition 
against the Jews was presented to the German Chan- 
cellor, in twenty-six volumes, 14,000 sheets, and with 
255,000 signatures. 

Every signature to that most shameful document 
which the nineteenth century has witnessed was set 
there by — Judaism itself. It was Israel that taught 
Christendom its black art of cursing. The Christian 
idea of a Chosen People of Christ, commissioned to 
make war upon other peoples as heathen, infidels, 
hosts of Antichrist, is a precise transcript of the Judaic 
idea of a Chosen People of Jahve, with commission to 

* Superstition and Force. By Henry C. Lea, p. 26. Phila- 
delphia, 1878. 



252 THE WANDERING JEW. 

put Gentiles to the edge of the sword. In the darkest 
ages, when holocausts of Jews were offered in sacrifice 
to a deified member of their race, the Christian might 
have addressed his victim with a paraphrase of Shy- 
lock's words, " If a Baalite disagreed with a Jew, what 
was his humility ? Slaughter. If a Jew disagree with 
a Christian, what should his sufferance be by Jewish 
example? Why, slaughter. The intolerance your 
Testament teaches me I will execute, and it shall go 
hard but, with the aid of my Testament, I will better 
the instruction !" 

When Moses Mendelssohn was asked, " When will 
the Jews become Christians ?" he answered, " When 
the Christians cease to be Jews." 

After Shakspeare had startled the world with a 
suspicion that the Jew is a man, it still required a 
hundred and fifty years, or thereabout, to awaken the 
further suspicion that a Jew might be a good, even a 
religious man. This revelation came through Lessing. 
When he was coming of age, Lessing recognised the 
injustice done to the Jews of Germany. Every Jew 
entering Berlin was compelled to pay toll at Branden- 
burg Gate. The meanest Christian might gain credit 
by insulting or assaulting a Jew. Frederick the Great 
could write, "Jesus was a Jew, yet we persecute the 
Jews," but his wide toleration left that people unpro- 






AHASUERUS VINCJUS. 253 

tected. Lessing wrote an early drama, Die Jndeii, 
which touched gently on the matter. In it a wealthy 
Jew of high character saves the life of a Christian 
baron and his daughter. The baron desires the youth 
to marry his daughter, but finding to what race and 
religion he belongs, that, of course, is impossible. So 
the drama ends. Why impossible ? The answer to 
that question had to be postponed. There are some 
evils in this world which are like the birth-mark in 
Nathaniel Hawthorne's story : the chemist succeeded 
in extracting the birth-mark from his wife's face, but 
the wife lay dead. When the mark of the cross dis- 
appears from the Wanderer's brow, so that the 
Christian who has branded him shall no longer say 
as he passes, " He is a Jew," nor for that part from 
his daughter's lover, Christianity will be dead. The 
flower of Lessing's great heart and mind was Nathan 
the Wise. The apologue of " The Three Rings," in 
which the Jew, the Moslem, the Christian Templar, 
raised above their bigotry by mutual human service 
are jseen in a tableau of charity, shone like the star of 
a new religion over Germany. It is the " Ideal of 
Religious Liberty," said Schwartz, Historian of 
Modern Theology at Halle ; " Truly can Deity be 
said to pervade every line of Nathan," said Kuno 
Fischer, of Jena University ; while in it Strauss sees 



254 THE WANDERING JEW. 

one advancing the " Kingdom of God on earth."* Yet 
even Lessing was still not equal to the idea of having 
the Jewess marry the Christian. Just as we are 
listening to hear the marriage-bells ring out for the 
lovers, lo, they turn out to be brother and sister ! So, 
the religious equality having been proclaimed a 
hundred and fifty years after Shakspeare had pro- 
claimed the human equality, Lessing leaves it to a 
like time to establish the social equality of Jew and 
Christian. 

But was this line drawn altogether by the Christian ? 
Lessing's friendship with Moses Mendelssohn had 
taughthim otherwise. When Michaelis, the theologian, 
read his early play, " The Jews," he wrote a criticism 
in which he expressed a doubt whether an oppressed 
and despised race could produce such a man as the 
hero. Mendelssohn replied, and Lessing, enclosing 
this reply to Michaelis, wrote concerning its author : 
" He really is a Jew, a man of five-and-twenty, who, 
without any instruction, has acquired great attain- 
ments in languages, in mathematics, in philosophy, 
in poetry. I foresee in him an honour to our nation, 
if he is allowed to come to maturity by his co- 
religionists, who have always displayed an unfortunate 

* Nathan the Wise. From the German, with an introduction, 
by R. Willis, M.D. London : Williams and Norgate. 



AHASUERUS VINCTUS. 255 

spirit of persecution towards men like him." The 
confirmation of this apprehension on the part of the 
Jews' earliest champion in Germany may be found in 
the enthusiasm which the next eminent Mendelssohn 
put into his oratorio of " St. Paul." 

Goethe tells us that he had intended to bring his 
Wandering Jew to a meeting with Spinoza. The 
great German had met with two illustrations of the 
legend he did deal with, of Faust carried off by 
demons. One was in the case of Lessing, who, for 
his defence of Jews and his attack on historic 
Christianity, had been piously impaled by a rumour 
that Satan had appeared at his death-bed. The 
other was in a tract he picked up in which Spinoza 
was denounced as an infidel, and upon which was a 
picture of the noble man, giving him diabolical 
features. But, alas ! Spinoza had been more a martyr 
among his own people than among Christians. 
Ahasuerus with the red cross on his brow would have 
found Spinoza also a lonely wanderer, outcast from his 
people, but not under any Christian doom. 

Were Goethe alive, he would find Spinoza still in 
Europe, and still a lonely wanderer amid the scowling 
hatred of both Jew and Christian. He would find in 
England, certainly, a steady tendency of synagogue- 
Judaism to find its ally and support in the Chris- 



256 THE WANDERING JEW. 

tianity which alone represents its ancient superstition 
and bigotry. It is the orthodox Jew who on Satur- 
day sets the model of a Sabbath for the Christian to 
copy on Sunday. When the parliamentary oath — 
half Romish, half Jewish — is questioned, Jew and 
Christian stand side by side in its defence, and 
together seek to impose upon Englishmen of the 
nineteenth century the theological test of belief in an 
oath-bound and oath-guaranteeing deity in which no 
educated man can possibly believe. The orthodox 
male Jew thanks Jahve in his liturgy that he was not 
made a woman ; and the male Christian responds by 
excluding women from political rights. While in 
Germany the Christian persecutes the Jew as Anti- 
christ, in England the Jew persecutes the Antichris- 
tian as Armillus. The Jew recognises a believer in 
the Trinity as a true theist, and the Christian accepts 
the Jewish worshipper of Jahve as a theist ; and they 
make common cause against the disbeliever in both 
as a " miscreant," an " atheist." Some influential 
Jews recently made an effort to " Boycott " the Jewish 
World newspaper for its criticisms on Christianity. 
From another " Jewish " quarter there came a sharp 
cry of distress and anger because a scholar attempted 
to prove that Jesus was not of the Jewish race ! 

It is a significant fact that the man of whom the 



AHASUERUS VINCTUS. 257 

Jews of recent times have been proudest, the states- 
man whom every Israelite in Europe was glad to aid 
with his information and his wealth, was a Jew whose 
circumcision had been subordinated to Christian 
baptism. This combination of auspices — the heart of 
an ancient Jew with the political advantages of a 
Christian — made Lord Beaconsfield a symbolical 
figure. It is only in its Christianised form that 
Judaism can ever behold even a partial fulfilment of 
its ancient dreams of worldly power. The theocracy 
of Jahve is henceforth dependent for every shred of 
its authority upon the golden sceptre of Christ. 

Christ is for the present a monarch — in England the 
last surviving sovereign whose rule is at all theocratic. 
The Jews, as we have seen, were really saved from ex- 
termination by powerful rulers who only hungered for 
their money while the mob thirsted for their blood. 
Fear of the populace was part of the heritage of the 
Jew, transmitted by heredity. However bravely the 
modern Jew — at least up to this generation — might 
begin with the radicalism of his prophets, he was 
pretty sure to develop into a supporter of strong 
government ; and there has hitherto, in most countries, 
been always sufficient Christian intolerance to enable 
that evolution to pass its embryonic phases without 
arrest. Heine begins with revolutionism and atheism ; 

17 



258 THE WANDERING JEW. 

ends with worshipping Napoleon I. (whom he sees 
protecting Jews along the Rhine), and God (of whose 
existence he was convinced by the sense of smell while 
mingling with the atheistical ouvriers in their Paris 
cliibs), Benjamin Disraeli begins with poetical eulogy 
of regicide, and ends with turning a queen into an 
empress. So far as this ancient reactionism can 
survive into the immediate future, it must necessarily 
be the ally of Christianity. The English Jews who 
paid so large a sum to bring back Charles II. to his 
throne, were represented by those who gathered to 
the support of the Christian Lord Beaconsfield. 

Lord Beaconsfield was for the Jews a triumph for 
their race, but a humiliation for their religion. They 
must needs find their leader in a family of apostates ! 
But the orthodox Jews knew well thatthis humiliation 
was more than compensated to them in the new 
resource which their christened leader opened for them 
against their party of progress. Disraeli the Elder had 
fled from the dry bones of Judaism to find intellectual 
freedom. Disraeli the Younger, sent by his father into 
the Christian Church, found there the dry bones all 
turned into armed men. 

Isaac Disraeli made an earnest effort to be at once 
a man of letters and a member of the synagogue. 
When his effort had proved vain, and he must 



AHASUERUS VINCTUS. 259 

follow Spinoza and Mendelssohn on the path of exile, 
he wrote to the wardens of Bevis Marks synagogue : 
w Many of your members are already lost ; many you 
are losing ! Even those whose tempers and feelings 
would still cling to you are gradually seceding. But 
against all this you are perpetually pleading your 
existing laws, which you would enforce on all the 
brethren alike. It is of these obsolete laws so many 
complain. They were adapted by fugitives to their 
peculiar situation, quite distinct from their own, and 
as foreign to us as the language in which they were 
written. For the new circumstances which have arisen 
you are without laws." 

Soon after his separation from the synagogue he 
wrote his work The Genius of Judaism. In it is the 
following passage : " The religious Judaism of the 
Theocracy degenerated into Rabbinical Judaism by 
fabulous traditions and enslaving customs. Dictators 
of the human intellect, the Rabbins, like their succes- 
sors, the papal Christians, attempted to raise a 
spurious Theocracy of their own. A race of dreaming 
schoolmen contrived to place an avowed collection of 
mere human decisions among the hallowed verities 
and the duties of devotion, to graft opinions of men 
on the scion of divine institutions ; nay, even to prefer 
the gloss in direct opposition to the divine precept, 

17 — 2 



260 THE WANDERING JEW. 

whenever, as they express it, ' the tradition is not 
favoured f that is, when the oral tradition absolutely 
contradicts the written law. The Jews live according 
to their laws, and according to their traditions and 
customs ; for their traditions have become an integral 
part of their written law, and their customs have been 
converted into rites. The Judaic superstitions have 
been substituted for the code of Revelation. We may 
ask, by what enthralling witchcraft, by what perverse 
ingenuity, has such a revolution been brought 
about ?" 

In reading this I am reminded of the Russian 
folk-tale of " The Devouring Sister." The Vampire 
born into a family devours each member of it succes- 
sively, to the last — a brother who slays her. After 
she is dead, he hears her voice gently entreating him 
to think with compassion on her hard doom, and to 
preserve some bit of her remains. Moved by this 
appeal, the brother folds one drop of her blood in a 
leaf and carries it in his bosom. When he reaches 
home he falls dead ; the one drop of Vampire blood 
had devoured his heart. The fatal drop which Isaac 
Disraeli carried away from his dead Judaism was 
folded in the fine passage just quoted, as in a green 
leaf: it is in the phrase, "scion of divine institutions." 

There is enough in that brief creed to sustain every 



AHASUERUS VINCTUS. 261 

persecution of reason and conscience the world ever 
saw. The Sanhedrim is in it ; the Inquisition is in it. 
The belief that the God of the universe established 
the institutions of ancient Judea is enough to eat the 
human heart out of every generation that presses it, 
with whatever sentiment, to its breast. 

It was perfectly logical for Isaac Disraeli to have 
his son baptized a Christian. Seeing in the so-called 
u religion " of his race a " scion of divine institutions," 
he rightly saw in Christianity the natural expansion 
and historic development of that " scion." He had 
said to the synagogue, " For the new circumstances 
which have arisen you are without laws." Christianity 
supplied those laws. The same voice spake again 
when, thirty-seven years ago, his son reminded 
Christendom that it was obeying the laws and 
saturated in the literature of the Jewish race ; when 
he claimed that Moses was summoned by Jahve " to 
be the organ of an eternal revelation of the divine will." 

The freethinker owes a certain debt to Lord Bea- 
consfield for his logical treatment of Christianity. 
That unanswerable argument of his in " A Political 
Biography," that the Jews deserved gratitude for pre- 
vailing on the Romans to crucify Jesus, so securing 
the Atonement; that it was a sublime act and 
sacrifice, Jews being the ordained immolators, securing 



262 THE WANDERING JEW. 

the salvation of the world ; that no one has ever been 
permitted to write under the inspiration of the Holy 
Ghost but a Jew ; that all Christians acknowledge 
that the only medium of communication between 
themselves and God is the Jewish race ; that the 
Mother of God was a Jewess ; that, indeed, is a reductio 
ad absurdtim, which cannot be unwelcome to the age 
of common sense. But every nail he thus drove into 
the coffin of Christianity was one which had pierced the 
hands and feet of humanity from Canaan to Calvary, 
and from Calvary to Smithfield. 

The devotion of Lord Beaconsfield to the Jewish 
people was a fearful retribution on the synagogue 
that drove out his father. His kiss was as fatal as it 
was sincere. He taught the Jewish youth that the 
path to power and glory, not merely for themselves 
but for their race, lay in the direction of Christianity. 
His spirit may yet survive as the Moses of a journcy 
through the baptismal sea to the Promised Land. 
He confirmed them in every error — in all their race- 
egoism, in all their indifference to the progressive 
enlightenment of the world, and gave their bigotry a 
new lease of life by a Christian confirmation. The 
most eloquent passage he ever wrote is in Tancrcd, 
in the " Feast of Tabernacles," which the Jewish 
World, in quoting it after his death, said might 



AHASUERUS VINCTUS. 263 

have been uttered by a Chasid in a moment of 
inspiration : " The vineyards of Israel have ceased 
to exist, but the eternal law enjoins the children of 
Israel still to celebrate the vintage. A race that 
persist in celebrating their vintage, although they 
have no fruits to gather, will regain their vineyards. 
What sublime inexorability in the law ! But what 
indomitable spirit in the people ! It is easy for the 
happier Sephardim, the Hebrews who have never 
quitted the sunny regions that are laved by the Mid- 
land Ocean ; it is easy for them, though they have 
lost their heritage, to sympathise in their beautiful 
Asian cities or in their Moorish and Arabian gardens, 
with the graceful rites that are, at least, an homage 
to a benignant nature. But picture to yourself the 
child of Israel in the dingy suburb or the squalid 
quarter of some bleak northern town, where there is 
never a sun that can at any rate ripen grapes. Yet 
he must celebrate the vintage of purple Palestine ! 
The law has told him, though a denizen in an icy 
clime, that he must dwell for seven days in a bower, 
and that he must build it of the boughs of thick 
trees ; and the Rabbins have told him that these thick 
trees are the palm, the myrtle, and the weeping 
willow. Even Sarmatia may furnish a weeping 
willow. The law has told him that he must pluck 



264 THE WANDERING JEW. 

the fruit of goodly trees, and the Rabbins have 
explained that goodly fruit on this occasion is con- 
fined to the citron. Perhaps, in his despair, he is 
obliged to fly to the candied delicacies of the grocer. 
His mercantile connections will enable him, often at 
considerable cost, to procure some palm-leaves from 
Canaan, which he may wave in his synagogue while 
he exclaims, as the crowd did when the divine 
descendant of David entered Jerusalem, ' Hosannah 
in the highest !' There is something profoundly 
interesting in this devoted observance of Oriental 
customs in the heart of our Saxon and Sclavonian 
cities ; in these descendants of the Bedoueens, who 
conquered Canaan more than three thousand years 
ago, still celebrating that success which secured their 
forefathers, for the first time, grapes and wine. Con- 
ceive a being born and bred in the Judenstrasse of 
Hamburg or Frankfort, or rather in the purlieus of 
our Houndsditch or Minories, born to hereditary 
insult, without any education, apparently without a 
circumstance that can develop the slightest taste, or 
cherish the least sentiment for the beautiful, living 
amid fogs and filth, never treated with kindness, 
seldom with justice, occupied with the meanest, if not 
the vilest, toil — bargaining for frippery, speculating 
in usury, existing for ever under the concurrent 



AHASUERUS VINCTUS. 265 

influence of degrading causes which would have worn 
out, long ago, any race that was not of the unmixed 
blood of Caucasus, and did not adhere to the law of 
Moses ; conceive such a being, an object to you of 
prejudice, dislike, disgust, perhaps hatred. The 
season arrives, and the mind and heart of that being 
are filled with images and passions that have been 
ranked in all ages among the most beautiful and the 
most genial of human experience ; filled with a sub- 
ject the most vivid, the most graceful, the most 
joyous, and the most exuberant ; a subject which 
has inspired poets, and which has made gods — the 
harvest of the grape in the native regions of the vine. 
He rises in the morning, goes early to some White- 
chapel market, purchases some willow-boughs for 
which he has previously given a commission, and 
which are brought, probably, from one of the neigh- 
bouring rivers of Essex, hastens home, cleans out the 
yard of his miserable tenement, builds his bower, 
decks it, even profusely, with the finest flowers and 
fruits he can procure, the myrtle and the citron never 
forgotten, and hangs its roof with variegated lamps. 
After the service of his synagogue, he sups late with 
his wife and his children in the open air, as if he 
were in the pleasant villages of Galilee, beneath its 
sweet and starry sky." 



266 THE WANDERING JEW. 

" What sublime inexorability in the law !" Nay, 
what binding, paralysing, mercilessness in the self- 
imposed law that holds the eyes of a race for ever at 
the back of its head instead of in the forehead ! 
In the great and grievous error of those words is 
repeated once more the doom of the Wandering 
Race. In them Jesus says again to Ahasuerus, " As 
thou hast refused to go out in the general vineyard 
of humanity, to toil and gather with the true and 
earnest of all races and religions, be this thy sentence: 
Keep thy small province of mouldered faith ; go on, 
and on, and for ever, celebrating vineyards that do not 
exist, pressing dead grapes that yield no wine, waving 
dead palm-leaves before a Messiah that can never 
arrive, bound in thine everlasting Houndsditch round 
by dreams of myrtle-bowers in a barbarian paradise 
long ago turned to a Valley of Jehoshaphat ! : ' 

Lord Beaconsfield also dealt his blow to Spinoza. 
He defended the rights of the Jews in Parliament on 
the ground that they were all Jews, all believers in 
Moses and the Prophets ; and that the alternative of 
this was belief in Hume and Gibbon. The day of his 
burial was solemnised by the party he had led with 
an effort to drive out of Parliament an Englishman 
who preferred Hume and Gibbon to Moses and the 
Prophets. 



AHASUERUS VINCTUS. 267 



This is the doom of Judaism. This is Ahasuerus 
bound. There is a nobility in the Ahasuerus that 
Shelley evokes in Queen Mab, a Semitic Prometheus 
bound for ever on Time and its desolations, as a rock, 
with bigotry and intolerance feeding vulture-like upon 
his heart because he will not bend to tyrannical Jove, 
either in the form of Jahve or of Jesus ; suffering 
as the friend of a Humanity also groaning beneath a 
celestial despotism, but cringing as he will not. 
But there is nothing Promethean in the mere prefer- 
ence for the chains of one tyrant over those of another. 
There is nothing noble in a sect accepting its rock and 
vulture through servility to a deity of whose indiffe- 
rence or impotence or non-existence the history of his 
worshippers is a sufficient proof. There is no majesty 
in martyrdom unless it is endured for the deliverance 
and welfare of all mankind. There was a time when 
the Jews suffered nobly ; they stood almost alone in 
preserving the protest of the human mind against 
priestly impostures, which could not be maintained by 
the thinking Greeks and Romans — who no doubt 
knew the facts as well as Lucian and Celsus — against 
imperial decrees. But that time passed when thought 
became free. The emancipation of the Jews politi- 
cally brought to their side Herakles — a human-hearted 
deliverer — who cut their outward cords. Judaism, 



268 THE WANDERING JEW. 

remaining on its Caucasus, apart from the evolution 
of humanity, is bound only by inward chains. Its 
doom, in free countries, comes only from within. 

It is forbidden that any man or race shall find 
strength and happiness in isolation, and this race is 
withheld by its traditional system and its dogmas 
from co-operation with mankind in its nobler aims 
and tendencies. Their fundamental error is to regard 
the God of Israel as different from the Gods of other 
people. Upon that rests the w r ild superstition that 
the Jews, in some sense or other, are "a chosen people" 
or " a peculiar people." It is the doctrine alike of 
Christianity and Judaism ; but as in the dreary past 
it has been the dogma most fatal to the Jews — 
their accepted supernatural eminence logically lead- 
ing to their supernatural doom — it must be equally 
fatal in their future of freedom, in an intellectual sense. 
So long as they are marked off in the human world in 
this way they will not find rest ; for that can be found 
only when their genius — earning such wreaths as 
adorn the brow of Spinoza and Heine, or those which 
came from every capital to lie on the grave of Offen- 
bach — is identified with the general work and play of 
the world, and their religious aims such as arc 
common to all who acknowledge allegiance to reason 
and pursue the equal welfare of mankind. 



XIX. 

AHASUERUS DELIVERED. 

THERE are certain races of mankind whose history or 
whose character has made them the tests of civilisa- 
tion. In one direction the negro has been such. In 
*the development of English self-government, on both 
sides of the Atlantic, there came a time when its fine 
theories of liberty were put to the test. In America 
the poor ignorant negro knelt chained befjre the 
genius of the Republic. His slavery represented 
many millions of money, his freedom must cost many 
thousands of lives ; but Justice said, "There is that 
lowly man — helpless, of alien race from you, too poor 
to pay you anything : if you can do justice to him, 
can make him a citizen, the world will know that you 
are really a republic." 

In another direction the Jewish race has been the 
rest and register of civilisation. It was the one visible 
embodiment of Antichrist in Christendom. While 



270 THE WANDERING JEW. 

missionaries were going through the world to convert 
the world, the Jew also went through the world — 
moral, religious, learned — a compulsory wanderer and 
missionary, in whose scars might always be read the 
spirit of the Church he opposed, and the meaning of a 
vicarious atonement, whose corollary was the unend- 
ing crucifixion of a race for the offence of three or four 
of their ancestors. This Wandering Jew knocked at 
the doors of law-courts. "Who art thou?" said the 
judges. " I am Antichrist." " Come in and be burnt," 
said they. He came in and was burnt. But ever 
rising from his ashes, the Wanderer marched on. 
Again, after some centuries, he knocked at the door 
marked Justice. " Who art thou ?" asked the judges. 
" I am Antichrist," he said. " Stay out and be 
mobbed," said they. And so he wandered until he 
reached the century when England opened the door 
and said, " Enter and receive thy right." Even Judge 
Jeffreys, in the time of James II., would not accept 
the old law which disabled a Jew from prosecuting a 
Christian. " Pay him his money," he cried to the 
defendant. " His action is not against a Christian : 
you are more'a Jew than he is ! " At many doors this 
unconquerable Antichrist had to knock in this land : 
slowly, against frantic attempts to bar them, they 
swung open, one after the other ; and it was proved 



AHASUERUS DELIVERED. 271 

that English justice, confronting what Christendom 
called a devil, was ultimately equal to giving that 
devil his due — in society, in the law-court, in the 
Parliament. 

The English have managed, to hold superstition 
more in order in their smaller territoiy than it is held in 
Eastern Europe, yet they must not take for their own 
race all the credit for the equality that has been ac- 
corded the Jew in England. The credit is mainly due 
to himself. Some forty years ago, when wild stories 
reached Great Britain from Damascus and Rhodes of 
how Jews were suffering horrible outrages on account 
of absurd accusations — such as sacrificing Christian 
"*"' priests and children — the entire English community 
joined to support Sir Moses Montefiore in his mission 
to repress that fanaticism. But when England had sent 
Sir Moses on his noble mission, it turned to consider 
its own relation to the Jews, and found on its statute- 
book laws which still bore witness of the ages when 
Jewish blood had mingled with Christian sacrifices. 
The laws were even then — forty years ago — not all 
obsolete. But some of them were, and others 
have since become so, largely through the fact 
that the Jews had made themselves useful to the 
country. 

Just now England is again called to J 00k abroad 



272 THE WANDERING JEW. 

though nearer home, and consider the outbreak of 
fanaticism in Germany. 

Dr. Carl Vogt, the naturalist, recently expressed 
his belief that the present persecution of Jews in 
Germany is a recurrence of ancient Teutonic 
barbarism. He explains Judenhetze scientifically, 
on the principles of Atavism. Every now and then 
there must be a recrudescence of suppressed barbarism. 
Those who have read, in A Tramp Abroad, those 
accounts of the duels witnessed by imperturbable 
Mark Twain in that country — duels in which students 
cut and slash each other in a friendly way, in the 
intervals of drinking beer together, and flaunt their 
facial gashes upon the street with pride, will suspect \ 
that the barbarism in coming back had not far to 
travel. Nevertheless, we must remember that Ger- 
many has not yet completed that revolution which 
shall bring the people under the influence of their best 
heads ; its great science, art, and literature are still 
carried on as it were in cloisters. The throne of 
Germany's noble Reason is usurped by heartless 
pretenders in politics and hypocrites in religion. 
Barbarossa will awake presently, and when he corner 
forth from his cave it will not be in the guise of 
Emperor William or Prince Bismarck, nor yet as the 
priest-ridden Jew-hater, but as a cultured and 



AHASUERUS DELIVERED. 273 

courageous People, with their feet alike on titled 
despotism and parochial barbarism. 

As, however, in the outrages on Jews at Damascus 
and Rhodes, in the last generation, England caught 
a glimpse, as in a mirror, of certain features from her 
own hideous past still surviving in her laws, so one 
can hardly turn from the Judenhetze of Germany 
w : 'hout a consciousness that there are still certain 
scandals in the attitude of English Christianity 
towards the Jews. The chief scandal is that there 
should be an organised society for converting them— 
as if they were savages. 

The existence of such a society in London will one 
day be quoted to show how much pious preadamitism 
survived amid our telegraphs and telephones. It is 
not civilised for men to suppose that a good Jew is 
inferior to a good Christian. It is scandal that the 
learned clergy should permit the people to suppose 
that Christian churches and sects have any moral or 
spiritual advantage over those who attend the 
synagogue. How many mothers who teach their 
children the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, or 
rehearse to them the parables of the New Testament, 
pity the children of Jewish mothers as knowing 
nothing of those beautiful and tender sayings ? How 
many of them even realise that the Golden Rule is in 

18 



274 THE WANDERING JEW. 

the Pentateuch ; and that every Jewish child learns 
those sweet sayings and parables where Jesus learned 
them — at his Jewish mother's knee ? 

It is a great misfortune that religious liberalism, in 
its revolt from the primitive Judaism which Protest- 
antism and Puritanism restored, and which survives now 
chiefly among Sabbatarian and dogmatic Christians, 
has kept before the world only that ancient Jahvism 
under which Canaanites were exterminated. It 
has thus indirectly fostered the fallacy which regards 
as Judaism much that even strict Jews have long ago 
outgrown. The Jews themselves, however, as we have 
seen, are largely to blame for the persistence of this 
vulgar delusion ; indeed, even many of their liberal 
thinkers have obstinately preserved their new wine in 
ceremonial bottles, with the ancient labels, and helped 
to convey the popular impression that their religion 
is unchanged. But it is changed. Even the strictest 
Jews are to-day less Sabbatarian, and more emanci- 
pated from the barbarism of sacrificial superstitions, 
than Christians. When Moses Mendelssohn said that 
the Jews would become Christians " when the 
Christians cease to be Jews," he no doubt recognised 
that Christians are preserving as dogma the Judaism 
which Jews keep as a shell, but inwardly have out- 
grown ; and that a conversion of the Jews to 



AHASUERUS DELIVERED. 275 

Christianity would really carry them back to Levitical 
beliefs long replaced by the modern ideas prevailing 
inside the hereditary and patriotic walls from which 
they fear to venture. 

Spinoza was as representative a Jew as ever lived, 
and never more than when the synagoguedisowned him. 
The history of his race for a thousand years had been 
to him an instruction in fidelityand independence. That 
there is a vigorous Left among the Jews is apparent 
in every direction ; not only in Jewish scholarship, 
which is assisting in the work of detaching from their 
Bible and other sacred books a Hebrew Mythology, 
but also in the political and social influence of Jews. 
The outbreak of Judenhetze in Germany is a bad 
enough symptom for the Teutons, but a hopeful sign 
for the Jews. Socially they have excited jealousy by 
the extent to which, having become men and women 
of the world, they are able to support that character 
by their wealth. Politically, they would appear to 
have so completely entered into those liberal and 
popular movements which they so long eschewed, 
that the Imperial Power is under the necessity of 
reminding them that, as in the past they suffered 
from the mob, and were protected by princes, so it 
may be again. The retention of the Rev. Mr. Stoecker 
as Court Chaplain, while he is leading this agitation so 

18—2 



276 THE WANDERING JEW. 

unscrupulously, is a confession that the anti-Semitic 
movement has the encouragement of the Emperor 
and his Chancellor. To awaken Teutonic jealousy of 
Jewish wealth, just beginning to be displayed in the 
enjoyment of Gentile luxuries ; to arouse Christian 
fanaticism against the growing freethought of a race 
ceasing to expect any Messiah : such are the obvious 
methods by which the German Government hope to 
separate Jewish means and radicalism from the 
masses, and drive Jews to their ancient refuge — the 
strong central power always purchasable by money 
and servility. What success will crown this imperial 
effort remains to be seen. But that there should be a 
necessity for it is a confirmation of what the late Lord 
Beaconsfield asserted, and such good judges as Herr 
Eydmann and Karl Blind attest, that the Jews are very 
extensively concerned in popular movements on the 
Continent. 

That these liberal tendencies might be expected 
among the Jews generally when and where they feel 
assured of freedom and security, is suggested by the 
history of their race in America. It is certain that 
the leading Rabbins of that country would be 
regarded as perilously latitudinarian by their strict 
co-religionists of Europe. It is a significant unique 
fact that the high family of Adlers has produced a 



AHASUERUS DELIVERED. 277 

President of the Free Religious Association, which is 
made up of theists and agnostics developed out of 
Unitarianism and Transcendentalism. But, further- 
more, the leading Rabbins, Lilienthal, Wise, and 
Sonnenschein, are instances of the advanced 
Rationalism which pervades the Jewish body in 
America. These scholarly and eloquent Rabbins 
freely fraternise with the anti-supernaturalistic 
teachers of other antecedents than their own. It is 
pretty certain that they do not look for the advent of 
any personal Messiah, and never dream of any res- 
toration of their race to power in Palestine. They 
are not theocratic in politics, but republican, and 
regard America as the real Jerusalem of their race. 
Such is my conviction, based not only upon the works 
of the gentlemen I have mentioned, but upon personal 
acquaintance with them ; and I cannot doubt that, 
whatever may be their dissent from much that is 
written in these pages, they would confirm my opinion 
as to the tendency of the people of Jewish origin in 
America. Jews of the Old World are somewhat in 
the condition of the rich man who, when reproached 
for a stinted charity, said that he began life poor, and 
had never got the chill of poverty out of his bones ; 
these Jews have vivid traditions of persecution, and 
have not yet got the chill of fear out of their bones. 



278 THE WANDERING JEW. 

Recent events in Germany and Russia may even pro- 
long this timidity ; the ferocious reply to their 
attempt to mingle in the society and politics of the 
world may set back for a little their liberation. But 
the free heart and mind of Europe is with them, and 
will be felt not only in England but on the Continent. 
The unbinding of Ahasuerus is part of the civilised 
revolution which can never really go backward. 

Shakspeare was the first to show the Jew to be 
a man. Lessing was the first to show that a Jew 
might be as good a man as a Christian, the indispens- 
ability of Christ to excellence being quite ignored. 
Thus the seventeenth century had its gospel for the 
Jew, and the eighteenth century had its gospel. But 
in essence the gospel according to Lessing was not so 
high as that of the master at whose feet he learned it. 
Shakspeare had raised up the standard of Manhood, 
and in its light Judaism and Christianism are seen to 
be comparatively small things, and their contentious 
tempers proof that they are no longer religious in 
any pure sense. Lessing, even in his famous apologue 
of the Three Rings which a father gave to his equally 
beloved sons — similitudes of the Jewish, Moslem and 
Christian religions — makes the wise judge end the 
dispute as to which is the true ring by consecrating 
all three. The true ring, which the fond father had 



AHASUERUS DELIVERED. 279 

caused to be copied in two others, so that neither son 
might be disappointed, had the power to draw the 
love of all on its owner. But it also carried the 
right to sovereignty ; and this advantage so overbore 
the former virtue that each son, with his ring, was 
found to love himself alone. The Judge advises them 
to be each content with his ring : 

" Let each of you comport him in such wise 
As love unbribed commands ; let each resolve 
To show the world that in the ring he wears 
He holds the prize, its virtues being shown 
To Man in acts of justice, meekness, mercy, 
To God in thoughts of love and heartfelt trust." 

But the nineteenth century should transmit to the 
twentieth a nobler gospel for Jew, Moslem, and Chris- 
tian than that. Let each of them see that his ring is 
a survival from the ancient chain that fettered him to 
his several rock of superstition ; that so long as he 
holds faith in it, no transmutation of it into gold, no 
decoration with opal, can make it other than a talis- 
man to bind him, and isolate him from the real work 
of creating a Man able to be the providence of this 
world. Let the rings, not only of Israel, but of 
Christianity, and of all sects, be thrown into the flames 
of human love, that there may be formed a coronet 
for the Mother whose patient all-loving face poetry 
and science are revealing. " In this principle," said 



23o THE WANDERING JEW. 

Clifford, of the evolution of organic from inorganic 
things, " we must recognise the mother of life, and 
especially of human life, powerful enough to subdue 
the elements, and yet always working gently against 
them ; biding her time in the whole expanse of heaven, 
to make the highest cosmos out of inorganic chaos ; 
the actor, not of all the actions of living things, but 
only of the good actions ; for a bad action is one by 
which the organism tends to be less organic, and 
acts for a time as if inorganic. To this mother of 
life, personifying herself in the good works of humanity, 
it seems to me we may fitly address a splendid hymn 
of Mr. Swinburne's : 

" Mother of man's time-travelling generations, 
Breath of his nostrils, heart-blood of his heart, 
God above all Gods worshipped of all nations, 
Light above light, law beyond law, thou art. 
u Thy face is as a sword smiting in sunder 

Shadows and chains and dreams and iron things ; 
The sea is dumb before thy face, the thunder 
Silent, the skies are narrower than thy wings. 
# * #■ # # 

" All old grey histories hiding thy clear features, 
O secret spirit and sovereign, all men's tales, 
Creeds woven of men thy children and thy creatures, 
They have woven for vestures of thee and for veils. 

"Thine hands, without election or exemption, 

Feed all men fainting from false peace or strife, 
O thou, the resurrection and redemption, 
The godhead, and the manhood, and the life !" 



r 



XX. 

THREE WITNESSES. 

In Prague there is an ancient Synagogue, the interior 
of which is black with the mould and dust of seven 
centuries. There is a tradition that at some unknown 
point in it the holy name of Jahve is written, and, for 
fear of its obliteration, no cleansing or sweeping, 
however slight, has been permitted, until now the 
Synagogue has become a show-place of accumulated 
dirt, which tourists pass through with torches. This 
ancient structure is but a too faithful symbol of 
temples which preserve the superstitions of ages 
through fear that, if some holy name or creed be 
touched, religion and morality will suffer. 

Early in the last generation three Jewish boys — 
Israel, Jacob, and Henoch — were seated together in 
this Synagogue on a Saturday morning, awaiting the 
beginning of service. They were of different families, 
but playmates. No person was near them, and, 



282 THE WANDERING JEW, 

oblivious of the traditional prohibitions, they began 
, to amuse themselves by scraping off with their knives 
an inch of the black mould, here and there, to see 
what wood or stone was beneath. The Rabbi, hap- 
pening to pass at the time, cried out with horror at 
the sacrilege, and said, " The curse of Heaven may fall 
on you for that act !" 

The terrified lads put up their knives. Some neigh- 
bours who heard the voice of the angry Rabbi, but not 
his exact words, reported that he had said, " May the 
curse of Heaven fall on you for that act !" And this 
was the form in which the story was whispered about. 
Gradually a small saga grew up among the Jews of 
Prague about these three boys. They were regarded 
with an evil eye, under which their prospects suffered 
blight ; they were supposed to be under some mysteri- 
ous doom, they were avoided, and their families 
suffered much distress. The venerable Rabbi, repent- 
ing of his hasty words, tried to disabuse the minds of 
his congregation as to what he had said; but he was 
unable to undo what had been done. As the three 
advanced towards youth, the prejudices against them, 
and the belief that a doom overhung them, made their 
lives so miserable, that they desired to leave Prague 
altogether, and their parents thought this the best 
course. The families were in good circumstances, and 



i 



THREE WITNESSES. 283 

the young men went off fairly well educated and with 
some means. They resolved to emigrate to different 
regions. 

Jacob went to Northern Germany. He entered a 
university there and succeeded in his studies. Ani- 
mated by the hope of doing so well in life that his 
parents might ultimately have the happiness of seeing 
the prejudices of their neighbours disappear, he pre- 
sently excelled all other students. He became a 
favourite with the professors. But this excited the 
jealousy of other students. These conspired against 
him, and one of their best swordsmen was appointed 
to pick a quarrel with him. The quarrel came; Jacob 
was challenged ; in the duel he received an ugly 
wound, which deprived him of one eye, disfigured 
him, and injured his health. These troubles gradually 
affected his nerves to such an extent that his mind 
was partially affected. He began to suspect that 
there might be some truth in the belief of the neigh- 
bours in Prague, that he had fallen under a divine 
curse for having cleaned an inch of the old Syna- 
gogue-wall. This dread grew upon him to such an 
extent that, from having been a courageous youth, he 
became timid. Whenever he went out at night he 
seemed to be confronted by the student with whom 
he had fought the duel. He began to be looked upon 



284 THE WANDERING JEW. 

as an uncanny person by the common people in the 
city where he dwelt. Some even hustled him on the 
street, and the Christian boys sometimes threw refuse 
at the miserable man. He was one evening pur- 
posely tripped by some one and suffered a severe fall, 
which lamed him. Amid the shadows that darkened 
his room, which had gradually become dingy through 
poverty, he imagined that, like the patriarch aftcr 
whom he was named, he had wrestled with a dark 
phantom, which, however, had prevailed against him. 
The curse seemed to be fixed upon him irremissibly. 
The accumulated filth of the old Synagogue of 
Prague had carried with it the accumulated supersti- 
tions of ages ; his childish attempt to clear away a 
little of that visible mould had been vain, and he was 
now equally helpless to free any smallest space of his 
own mind from hereditary beliefs in dooms, spectres, 
spells. Thus he wandered, limping, miserable, amid 
Christian scoffs and Jewish suspicions, and so he 
wanders this day. 

The second of the lads that left Prague, Israel, came 
to England, where he was well educated. He thought 
over this Prague incident carefully, and came to feel 
a certain contempt for a Synagogue which so jealously 
cherished all its dirt. He found it written in the 
Talmud that " next to godliness is cleanliness," and 



THREE WITNESSES. 285 

began to perceive that the filth he had tried to scrape 
off was a type of the irrational usages and petty 
exactions which had overlaid the religion of his race. 
He had united himself to a Synagogue in London 
which was kept fair and beautiful ; but, as time wore 
on, he found that around the good hearts and fine 
minds of the English Jews there were walls on which 
had gathered the repulsive dust and dirt of ages 
transmitted from ancient Syria. So Israel resolved 
that he would make good the promise of his boyish 
knife, and clear away some of the spiritual mould 
from English Judaism. His ■ attempts at reform 
awakened the ire of Wardens, the hostility of 
Rabbins, and the opposition of a wealthy Semitic 
caste. Israel still believed in Jahve, and in the 
fundamental doctrines of the Jewish faith; he believed 
that if Judaism could be freed from its antiquarian 
walls it must lead the world. But he struggled in 
vain for years to secure from the chiefs of the 
Synagogues any modification of their usages. Further- 
more, his efforts in this direction began to tell seriously 
upon his personal prospects. He had studied law, 
been admitted to the bar, and for a time found some 
employment from his co-religionists ; but after it was 
discovered that he was endeavouring to interfere with 
the traditional usages of the Synagogue, he soon 



286 THE WANDERING JEW. 

found himself without clients, and with but a few 
friends — these being of Christian families. 

One evening Israel went to a theatre in London to 
witness the performance of the Merchant of Venice. 
He was much impressed by an incident of the Bible 
used by Shylock as a parable, wherein Jacob stuck 
wands before the ewes in breeding-time, and secured 
parti-coloured lambs, which, according to Laban's 
agreement, were all to fall to his (Jacob's) part. 
Shylock says : 

" This was a way to thrive, and he was blest ; 
And thrift is blessing, if men steal it not." 

The Christian Antonio must needs accept the^ 
" holy witness " of a book infallible to him and Shylock 
alike, and says that the result so good for Jacob was 
"sway'd and fashioned by the hand of Heaven." 
Israel went away from the theatre to his poor room, 
and bethought him that, great as was the wealth and 
power of a few Jews, the parti-coloured lambs had 
somehow fallen to the Christian lot. Was the " hand 
of Heaven " in this ? If the declaration of Jahve of 
old that his approval should be manifest in blessings, 
his disapproval in cursings, were faithful, could there be 
any doubt where the divine approbation rested in Eng- 
land ? Was Houndsditch the seal of Jahve's benedic- 



THREE WITNESSES. 287 

tion on his people ? or was not Belgravia rather the 
expression of his smile ? Houndsditch and Belgravia 
alike appealed to Jahve ; to which had he sent the 
multitude of spring lambs and the plenteous wool ? 

The germ that fell into Israel's mind at the theatre 
gradually grew. He presently found that the 
traditions of Judaism attained their real power and 
glory in Christianity. In the end he was baptized ; 
he was speedily surrounded by troops of friends. He 
possessed brilliant powers, and became eminent in 
literary and political life. Even his former co- 
religionists were inclined to utilise him, now that he 
no longer attempted to use his pen-knife on their 
mouldy customs. He was able to serve them in many 
ways, they were willing to repay his services ; and, 
thus, assisted by the race which gained prestige 
through his genius without the danger of it, and by 
the Christian community which saw in him a triumph 
of Christ, he became a great minister of State and a 
favourite in Palaces. And such he is to this day. 

The third of the three youths who left Prague, 
Henoch, wandered restlessly through Asia and Europe 

then came to France. He also was a man of brilliant 

powers, and for some time kept up his friendship with 
young Israel in London. In the course of their cor- 
respondence, the idea arose in him also of trying to 



283 THE WANDERING JEW. 

reform the Synagogue to which he had attached him- 
self in Paris. He failed in the same way, but the 
effect on his mind was different He could not recog- 
nise a direction from Jahve in the superior thrift of 
Christendom. He had heard that in America the 
Jews were in every way more liberal and progressive, 
and he resolved to emigrate thither. For this purpose 
he engaged a passage, and repaired to Havre to take 
his steamer. 

On his way to the wharf in Havre, Henoch was 
passing a small book-stall, when his attention was 
arrested by the appearance of the bookseller. This 
was an extremely aged Jew, with long white beard, 
deep-set eyes, and a queer, antique figure. He sat \ 
beside his little stand of dingy fourth-hand books, 
holding a small volume in his bony fingers, which he 
perused attentively. Henoch approached him and, 
speaking in Hebrew, asked him what books he had 
suitable for a traveller. The old man asked him 
whither he was travelling, and having received the 
reply, said : " Ah, that, too, was my dream ; but I never 
got farther than this. I am too old now — too old and 
too poor — and must leave the New World hope for our 
younger men.- But I sit here, and read about that 
land of promise, and my dim old eyes follow every 
ship that sails that way." Henoch asked to look at 



THREE WITNESSES. 289 

the book the aged Jew had been reading. It was an 
old Spanish book — Herrera's History of the Indies. 
Israel knew the language, and proposed to buy the 
book. The aged bookseller was somewhat reluctant 
but finally said : c It is the story of the discovery of 
the New World to which you are going ; take it, with 
an old man's good will; and may you carry to America 
something better than those Spaniards did, who tried to 
plant there every evil the Old World had produced !" 

On board the steamer Henoch read this book, and 
one narrative in it haunted his memory. It related 
that when the Spaniards had taken possession of the 
newly-discovered island they called Hispaniola — now 
Cuba — they began to trade in the Indians, who were 
shipped off as slaves to various regions. The island 
found itself in want of Indians, and having heard that 
the neighbouring Lucayan Isles were full of them, 
asked permission of King Ferdinand to allow them to 
bring these Lucayans over to Hispaniola, " that they 
might enjoy the preaching and political customs" 
which they (the Spaniards) had introduced. Having 
received this permission, the Spaniards went over to 
the Lucayans and told those simple islanders that they 
had come from the paradise of their ancestors ; they 
said that all whom they (the Lucayans) had loved and 
lost by death were now in a happy abode, enjoying 

19 



290 THE WANDERING JEW. 

perfect repose and every felicity ; and that their ships 
were ready to bear them to that happy land. The 
poor Lucayans crowded with laughter and joy to the 
Spanish ships ; the light of the Blessed Isle shone 
upon their faces. They sailed away from their island 
home, where they had known only peace and friend- 
ship, and were soon all working in dark mines under 
the slave-driver's scourge. The kid was seethed in 
its mother's milk. 

Henoch read and re-read this tragic history, and 
looked out over the sea westward. What a fearful 
fate was that of hearts that followed a dream of para- 
dise which led them into slavery and despair ! But 
slavery, what is it ? Is it only the subjection of one 
will to another ? or bondage of the body to toil for 
others ? May there not be islanders, even amid 
continents, following dreams of paradise, and of 
clasping their ancestral dead, into spiritual slavery, 
into a living entombment among skeletons and 
simulacra of things for ever turned to dust ? 

In the vision of Henoch there arose a memory of 
the ancient Synagogue at Prague. His eyes filled 
with tears as he recalled the dear and tender faces that 
he had seen there. His kind father, his gentle mother, 
the good-hearted neighbours, the once happy circle of 
playmates — how fair and peaceful that Lucaya had 



THREE WITNESSES. 291 

been ! But it was all at the mercy of a bit of dirt 
come down from the thirteenth century, consecrated 
by awe of four letters of a dead language. Under 
that spell kindly hearts had turned to stone, suspicions 
arisen, fear and dread, and from the ruin of a happy 
home he had been sent to wander through the world. 
The dream of an ancestral paradise had made that 
blackened Synagogue as dark a mine as any in which 
the discoverers of the New World set the islanders to 
toil ; it had imprisoned the Jewish genius and chained 
the Jewish heart. 

One morning, when his thought was full of these 
reflections, and the book received from the ancient 
Jew at Havre was open before him, Henoch caught 
his first sight of the New World, radiant in the sun- 
shine. He resolved that into that land of fresh oppor- 
tunity he would carry no dogma or custom which 
rested upon tradition or authority. In that land he 
saw the human race given a fresh opportunity, and he 
also would begin again. The Old World had followed 
its dreams of heaven through massacres and martyr- 
doms into a dreary and endless routine of wrong, 
which found its fit symbol in that fable his experience 
could well interpret, of an eternal Wanderer. 

His own race had been mainly responsible for that 
fatal misdirection of the energies and enthusiasm of 

19 — 2 



292 THE WANDERING JEW. 

the Old World which, had it not sought a Paradise 
among the dead, might have made the earth a para- 
dise for the living. Now he would consecrate his 
powers to persuade the people of the human race, to 
which in America he might belong, to burn behind 
them all these holy ships of Zion in which the Past 
might be imported, and to receive the Past only as it 
might be able to minister to science, or might come in 
confessions of the moral ruin it had wrought, as a 
warning for the new Age. 

In the New World, Henoch began his work oi' 
founding societies whose religion is to perform divine 
service for mankind, to make every day eternal, and 
to steadily transfigure man with the shining light of 
science and pure raiment of a renovated world. The 
wanderings of Henoch have changed to unhasting, un- 
resting progressions, traceable in fair transformations. 
His eloquence, which has learned every sweet and 
subtle tone of the Past, and caught the brave accent- 
of hope, wins the Christian from his cross and the 
Jew from his altar. He is still a welcome Voice in the 
cities, sierras, savannas, eldorados, crying The KING- 
DOM of Man is at hand. 



jHrflHTg 



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